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I have spoken at many conferences. Some of the best advice I can give: do not overload your slides. Too many new speakers are afraid they will forget something

I have spoken at many conferences. Some of the best advice I can give: do not overload your slides. Too many new speakers are afraid they will forget something, and cram in all kinds of stuff. If you do that, you'll wind up reading off the slides, and the audience will focus more on the screen than on you. My general rule of thumb is to never have more than three items on a slide to go through. Also, lots of pictures. That way, if people in the audience aren't super technical, they might not understand the jargon, but they will see a visual version of it. I also tend to advise against stupid cat photos and things. I know a lot of speakers who put things like that in as a "break" from the material, but it actually ultimately plays to undermine you, as a sort of admission that you're a bore. Another good trick to know your audience: ask basic questions to gauge the audience. "How many of you are programmers?" "How many of you have worked with Django?" and so on. That can help set the tone for whether you cover intro material or jump into more deep things. It also pulls the audience into the talk and breaks down the third wall issue.

stfu 14y ago
I like the do-not-overload your slides advise and noticed tremendous improvements in focus and "aliveness" in my presentation but I was wondering if anyone from a more traditional finance or consulting perspective could weight in on that issue. For example a friend of mine works on conventional M&A projects - with very crammed Powerpoint slides full of facts and figures. I have seen similarly crammed slides from the big consulting corporations. Now I was arguing for a Tufte approach, i.e. making handouts instead, but he rejected the suggestion as he is only one of the younger team members and the therefore associated problems with breaking the "we have always done it this way" paradigm. I am still somewhat pondering about this issue and I am not quite sure if having really packed slides can not actually become beneficiary in some occasions - meaning a hitting-them-over-the-head-with-data approach where it is core to produce some "evidence" and "analytical" approaches. I have found a similar mindset among some academics for constructing the viability of their research questions, methods, results in order to succeed in the peer-reviewed process. I would love to hear some opinions by those working in conventional blue chip companies how they view this slide/presentation issue.
- peterwwillis 14y ago
  You never want to "cram" your slides, but things like numbers and graphs are a good way to reinforce a key point and they go away remembering a percentage or big figure. I may not remember the contents of all your slides, but i'll remember the one that said 80% of software development is maintenance, or something to that effect.
ylem 14y ago
Here I would have to say that it depends on your audience--I generally agree, but if there are a lot of non-native speakers of the language you're speaking in, I find it helps to add more to the slides because for many people their reading comprehension is higher than their auditory comprehension....
- aestetix 14y ago
  That depends on the conference. One way you can get around that... if the conference gives out a CD or anything, you can put a more "verbose" slide deck on the conference CD and suggest that people who are non-native speakers can load up the CD and follow along on their laptop. The verbose version is also useful for people to download who cannot make the talk, especially if they are reading it in an environment where they can't listen to audio.

stfu 14y ago

I like the do-not-overload your slides advise and noticed tremendous improvements in focus and "aliveness" in my presentation but I was wondering if anyone from a more traditional finance or consulting perspective could weight in on that issue. For example a friend of mine works on conventional M&A projects - with very crammed Powerpoint slides full of facts and figures. I have seen similarly crammed slides from the big consulting corporations. Now I was arguing for a Tufte approach, i.e. making handouts instead, but he rejected the suggestion as he is only one of the younger team members and the therefore associated problems with breaking the "we have always done it this way" paradigm. I am still somewhat pondering about this issue and I am not quite sure if having really packed slides can not actually become beneficiary in some occasions - meaning a hitting-them-over-the-head-with-data approach where it is core to produce some "evidence" and "analytical" approaches. I have found a similar mindset among some academics for constructing the viability of their research questions, methods, results in order to succeed in the peer-reviewed process. I would love to hear some opinions by those working in conventional blue chip companies how they view this slide/presentation issue.

peterwwillis 14y ago
You never want to "cram" your slides, but things like numbers and graphs are a good way to reinforce a key point and they go away remembering a percentage or big figure. I may not remember the contents of all your slides, but i'll remember the one that said 80% of software development is maintenance, or something to that effect.

ylem 14y ago

Here I would have to say that it depends on your audience--I generally agree, but if there are a lot of non-native speakers of the language you're speaking in, I find it helps to add more to the slides because for many people their reading comprehension is higher than their auditory comprehension....

aestetix 14y ago
That depends on the conference. One way you can get around that... if the conference gives out a CD or anything, you can put a more "verbose" slide deck on the conference CD and suggest that people who are non-native speakers can load up the CD and follow along on their laptop. The verbose version is also useful for people to download who cannot make the talk, especially if they are reading it in an environment where they can't listen to audio.