This was great, but he seemed a little nervous, although his text was perfect.
This totally fubared my joke timing, so I had spent the entire night prior to this speech practicing, going so far as to do so over lunch in my hotel room, to the amusement of the cleaning lady who also needed the room. I didn't stop being terrified out of my freaking mind until "swan dive", which was the moment that I knew I had the crowd.
I am impressed how well you pulled it off. It is hard enough to write, memorize and deliver a 7.5 minute speech. Then to add a sadistic constraint like autoadvancing slides, that raises the bar. But you nailed it. Hats off.
I'd rather see a rule: Advance the slide within X seconds or it will auto advance. Then limit the number of words, or something, instead of the number of slides.
It's really common to overlook the amount of time that will be eaten up by applause/laughter, though. Don't forget to give yourself some breathing room for that sort of thing, particularly if your speaking format penalizes you in some fashion for going over time.
It's presumably part of the presentation style that started with Pecha Kucha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecha_Kucha) which then inspired Ignite talks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignite_(event)).
It's definitely a different approach but it can encourage people to present in a way that flows more rather than a presentation that is broken up on a per-slide basis.
Even if you're super prepared and you know your material is good, if you don't give presentations on a regular basis your reptilian brain just sits there screaming THEY ARE GOING TO KILL YOU to your autonomic nervous system. It happens to me almost every time I give a presentation (about twice a year), even though I really enjoy giving presentations and I am completely not nervous at all consciously.
When you're in an audience, do you want to kill a speaker? I know that when I'm in an audience, I (a) don't care at all; (b) switch off if the speaker is bad; (c) actually want to hear the information being giving them (and don't mind if the speaker is bad - and probably rooting for them if they are).
The reality is that in almost all cases people in the audience are there voluntarily because they want to hear what you have to say. They want you to succeed so that they can have an enjoyable experience listening to you.
I have also realized that this is true at times when I am in the audience for a speaker who is really nervous. In some small way it feels like I am part of the speech. I think most people have been in this situation and sort of cringed when a mistake happens, because you don't want to see the person on stage hurting, you want to see them do great.