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Presentation experiment

one gazillion of slides

Many guidelines for presentation slides ask you to make sure that each slide is up for at least 2 minutes and does not contain more than 5 bulletpoints, where each bulletpoint contains no more than 5 words.

Based on this, 65 slides would take more than 2 hours - how does it work to condense them into 7:30 minutes, averaging to one slide every 7 seconds?

One way of course: Rather than using Bulletpoint slides, use "Presentation Zen" style slides. These have full format images. And instead of up to five bulletpoints, they have up to one bulletpoint, with up to two words content - if at all. Then: Rehearse. Repeat. Rehearse. Repeat.

Safe environment for this experiment

As it's an experiment - it can go well. Or it can totally utterly fail. What's better than having a safe learning environment in this case?  An environment where people are helping to improve, rather than come to expect to be entertained? I've chosen a local Toastmasters club and since have had quite a few opportunities to practice public speaking and other roles from Toastmasters International's curriculum.

What can I say - I've heard this experiment went well. Yes, tempo was "upbeat" - leaving no breathing time for the audience is always a challenge. It was rather entertaining and not the typical "information pipelining" that is often done with slide presentations. Nice side effect: Changing slides with this high frequency provided natural notes and kept me in the rhythm. When properly rehearsed (way less than it would have been required without slides) it's easy to keep up the pace. The story unfolds while I see my own slides - no stuttering, not even a high amount of concentration.

My takeaway and message to self: It's a fun experiment. Just don't keep the pace up when you want to inform. Make sure you want to entertain.

Unfortunately there's no video of this experiment...




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