One Idea Per Slide
Why my presentations have 200 slides and why that's fine
My last talk had 187 slides for a 30-minute presentation. People thought I was crazy when they saw the file. But each slide was on screen for maybe 10 seconds. Some for 3 seconds. Nobody got bored.
I used to do the normal thing... 30 slides, bullet points, walls of text. And I'd watch people check their phones. Not because they were rude. Because I was boring. I was asking them to read while I talked. That's two things at once. Nobody wants to do that.
So I stopped.
Now every slide has one idea. If it has two ideas, it's two slides. If it can't stand alone, it doesn't belong. This sounds excessive until you try it. Suddenly your deck flows like a video. Each slide makes its point and gets out of the way before anyone has time to look down.
Competing With Phones
You're up there telling a story, but in their pocket is infinite content. Instagram. Twitter. Slack. Your job is to make the big screen more interesting than the small one.
The way I think about it... your presentation should feel like a video that changes with almost every sentence. Not a PowerPoint. Not a document projected on a wall. A video.
Live demos beat explanations. If you can show it working, show it working. If you can't demo live, show a video. If you can't show a video, show screenshots. Moving images beat still images beat words.
And the visual doesn't have to literally match what you're saying. Context gives meaning to any image. This is basically the Kuleshov Effect... a face next to food looks hungry, the same face next to a coffin looks sad. Your audience's brain connects the dots.
I once did a talk where every single slide was just a drawing of a butt. The talk had nothing to do with butts. But people watched the whole time wondering "why butts?" and that curiosity kept them there lol
Less Is More
When I talk about a product now, I don't describe features. I show someone using it. When I talk about a problem, I don't explain it. I show it happening.
"Feels instant" works better than "12-core neural engine." Nobody cares about specs. They care about what specs mean for them. When you do use numbers, make them simple. "2× faster." No charts. No footnotes.
Big typeface. Simple colors. Lots of whitespace. Cluttered slides look like you're trying to convince people. Clean slides look like you already know the answer.
One sentence per slide, max. Sometimes just one word. Sometimes just an image.
Anyway
I think about it like this... every slide is a chance for someone to check their phone. Every wall of text is an invitation to stop paying attention.
So I keep it moving. I keep it visual. I keep it simple.
My decks look insane in the file browser. 187 slides. 200 slides. But when I present, they just flow. And people watch.
I'm @pablostanley on Twitter if u wanna chat about this.
also, try a tool I've been working on: https://efecto.app/