Presentation Rules

So instead of “tire wear vs miles driven” it should say “tire wear increases with miles driven”

It saves people, especially non-technical ones, from having to read axes, look at the lines, and come to a conclusion while listening to you talk.

'Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them'

As in, make sure you give a clear summary at both the beginning and the end of the presentation. Most people have short attention spans and tend to best remember the beginning and end of things.

Make sure you've repeated the main points of your presentation at both the beginning and end to ensure maximum retention.

Slides are ok as a backdrop for a talk, as long as that talk works as its own cohesive narrative. Slides are also ok as a last resort if it is what the audience demands. A sales meeting with people who expect slides. Or a pitch with investors too ignorant or lazy to demand the precision of a document instead.

But in general; a document will be much much better. This guide references Tufte's, whose own advice is to write docs.

It's actually the Hegelian dialectic triad (thesis-antithesis-synthesis) from the late 1700s [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis,_antithesis,_synthesis

- Always ask for a copy of a good presentation. You can reuse any visually compelling elements.

- Start with a personal story or an interactive set of questions.

- Think about who your audience is, and why they care. What is in this presentation for them?

- If critical stakeholders are going to review your slides offline, as painful as it is, consider putting all your talking points in the slide and just reading from the deck.

- Smile. Make eye contact. Be excited by what you have to say. Pause... for dramatic effect. Use your hands. Use your hands more.

And so I build my deck with that rule in mind - Never more than 7 slides. Never more than 7 bullets per slide. Never more than 7 words per bullet.

Also, if appropriate, I like putting only a single number onto a slide. No title, no explanatory text. An example might be an interest rate.

That allows the audience to listen to what I have to say about that data point. Because we either read a slide, or we listen to the presenter - we cannot do both simultaneously.

Lockdown meetings have taught me to compress presentation to 25 minutes total per week, across my group’s three regular meetings.

It’s fantastic because it obviously helps focus the presentation, but also because it’s nudged me into providing the presentation as a PDF at the start of each netting, Amazon style, with a five minute period in which to read the document.

(This in itself is a nice way of gathering attendees. “Here’s the PDF for the meeting” is much less aggressive than ”friendly reminder we have a meeting rn.”)

My only wish would be that AsciiDoctor / PrawnPDF handled PNGs and Pygments faster. 5s is too slow to build a 3 page memo with graphics!

On that note, some organizations (e.g. The US Government) have cycles where words go from good, clued in meanings to bad, evil, outsider meanings. I realize this sounds like some high school clique stuff, but its so damn true. Its actually worse because there are many, many departments, and I'm sure many organizations have their own things. I had an aunt who was a grant writer and kept up with these things by volunteering to be a reader every so often. It kept her in touch with the trends. Now, you can follow other companies / governments social media accounts, request for proposals, and press releases for the phrasing you should use when presenting to them.

These days, unless it is organization photos, I really try to not have any people in my slides. I just don't think its worth it because you will offend someone. It might seem paranoid, but I really believe social media makes a lot of people from all sides overanalyze everything.

1) make the presentation interesting to sit through

2) have something that you are convincing the audience to do, you should be telling them to "do X" not just tell them "about X".

Whether you have page numbers (I don't) or builds (I do) or executive summaries (I don't) is not going to meaningfully add to the chances of your presentation landing.

Structure is key. The "Tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em; then tell ’em; then tell ’em what you told ’em"[1] method works well.

The Duarte Method's[2] "Big Idea"[3] is a good approach:

> A big idea is that one key message you want to communicate. It contains the impetus that compels the audience to set a new course with a new compass heading.

Presentations without a key message are just somebody standing there and talking at you.

[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/08/15/tell-em/

[2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470632011

[3] https://www.duarte.com/presentation-ideas/

2 typos: Rule 10 ("it's" s/b "its") and 14 ("marke" s/b "mark").

Brings back memories of this: https://guykawasaki.com/the-only-10-slides-you-need-in-your-...

The biggest one I have fits around 9 and 10. No numbers until the end. As in don't show data, tables, (a group of) numbers, graphs etc. until you are ready to cede the floor.

As soon as numbers appear, people's brains start analyzing and trying to make sense of what they are seeing, naturally this can/will lead to an inordinate amount of time discussing provenance, methodology and other associated aspects, or silent thinking i.e. not listening to your analysis.

Of course this doesn't apply to every type of meeting, but I always ensure I get everything else in up front first. Leave the detail in the back, don't bury the lead.

Does anyone else find this style of writing unbearably pompous?

The classic Really Bad Powerpoint by Seth Godin has some conflicting points but is still worth a read if you've never come across it.

http://www.wendelberger.com/downloads/ReallyBadPowerpoint.pd...

https://www.amazon.com/slide-ology-Science-Creating-Presenta...

If you're trying to diagrammatically convey something complex on your slide, make the order of reading obvious. When the information is 2-dimensional, readers will zig-zag across the slide trying to make sense and then give up until you walk them through it. If there is a linear order (numbering, arrows), they'll follow it.

I'd go even more drastic here, don't use words or only use nothing more than a few words in very very big font. The rest should be just data, visuals helping you to get to your point.

And don't make presentations to be hands-out. You can't serve both purposes at the same time.

So, careful of extremes.

Can't make heads or tails out of point 12 though. Who's including homework (??) in slides and making some assumption about it? Very "failed to communicate" meta.

Is this a typo? Most guides will suggest 24 pt as a baseline, and maybe 20 pt as minimum. 14 pt is really small for a presentation.

Here's the BBC attributing the very same image in 2015: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-34666150

Here's what Getty charges for this image ($55 and up): https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/successful-business...

There is even a comment from three years ago on the Flickr page saying the file has Corbis copyright embedded and asking if it's original.

How do I know these things? TinEye: https://tineye.com/search/ce7668fe2986a90a93d5fda4d1c90c8ee6...

It's very frustrating for hard working stock photographers who already only get 20% of the sale price to see Flickr enabling copyright violations by displaying images as Creative Commons when an algorithmic search of the two most popular stock photo sites shows it is not original.