Wednesday, April 25, 2018

The N Slide Rule

In my job, I am expected to present at random conferences on random topics. Nowadays I am coming across this unique but useless rule of "N Slides only". I don't get it, why do they care about how many slides I use to convey my message as long as I do it in the time alloted?

I have always believed in using more pictorial and less wordy slides. This way I can focus on delivering my content without looking at a distracted audience which is trying to frantically read my slides before I jump onto the next one. if all you want your audience to do is just read your slides, then you can as well print them out and distribute them before or after, rather than standing on the podium and reading them out collectively.

Anyway, last few occasions I tried to be a maverick and didn't adhere to the conference organizer's N slide rule. One organizer actually took matters in their own hands and randomly cut off slides from my deck that they felt "were not relevant".

It's frustrating to see how wordy some presenter's slides are. Wordy slides are also known as Documents. Presentations are not Documents. Just because you make wordy boring slides to put people to sleep, don't make it into a rule!

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