Here is my opinion: Slide should have images, diagrams or charts to illustrate what I say, almost never any text. What I say is written in advance in the notes of the presentation that is only visible to me while presenting, but will be readable by anyone who look at the file afterwards. I prepare the duration and delivery of the speech at least three times in full before presenting.
Rather than simply give you a piece of text to read, they do it like this so that you can't scan it to figure out what is actually important and focus on that. Every moment and detail must be indulged to the full.
I always feel obligated to reword so it doesn't seem like I'm reading off the slide. But then people are reading the slide and listening at the same time and I'm not sure it's better.
If the slide has all the information, then it's a poor slide deck.
The slides are supposed to be an outline. The rule of thumb is max seven lines and max seven words per line.
Here's a couple examples.
Good slide:
Revenue: -10% vs Estimate
Industry trends
Low demand for new products
Strong demand for XYZ
Also good slide, depending on who you're presenting to:
Revenue: -10% vs Estimate
Industry: -3%
New products: -30%
XYZ: +4%
Bad slide:
Revenue is 10% below estimate
Industry has seen a 3% drop in sales
New products ABC and MNO have had a 30% lower demand than we expected
Product XYZ has higher demand than anticipated with sales 4% higher than estimate
All the extra information on the bad slide can be delivered by the presenter. It's not necessary on the slide. The slide is for people to glance at to assist them during and after the presentation and to help them anchor themselves in the discussion.
I like your examples, you really capture how the definition of a "good" slide is context and audience dependent, and yet despite this, a "bad" slide is something that can be understood fairly objectively.
Each slide should have a max of 4 dot points, with each dot point roughly representing one spoken paragraph. Each dot point should have only the 3-4 most important words next to it. Speak the rest, but imagine that the dot point is what you want them to remember.
For example
Slide says:
Sales up 15%
What you say:
Due to the added bump from Christmas sales, we moved an additional 2500 units this quarter, which is about 15% of our year to date revenue. This is bigger than our Christmas sales last year, by about 7%. We think the increase is due to our new SKUs.
[Click, next dot point appears]
It's better to have lots of slides with less info per slide.
If you have a small number of slides but they are too dense, the audience will read it in a couple of seconds then get bored, and will stop paying attention while waiting for you to finish reading.
People who aren't good at presentation making think that they are supposed to convey absolutely everything they are saying and be crammed full of information. I was doing a group presentation sometime ago where my group members insisted I put paragraphs of info in my slides and were worried we would fail for not enough information. Even after explaining that they were meant to guide the audience in what I was going to say, they insisted that it was wrong
If you are good enough at your job and good enough with people, then you'll get pushed into management again. Realistically it's a compliment, but I understand the desire to weasel your way out of it, since that has been me too at multiple different times.
A good middle manager will change what they can, and hold the line against the things that they can't. They will be a bulwark of protection and understanding for those below them.
I'm more prone to making the slides be my notes, possibly with data-driven visual aids. 3-5 short bullet points per slide is usually reasonable. I don't actually give a lot of presentations these days, though.
I take this to the extreme: my slides have little to no text, or even white space. Each slide is basically a collage for pointing at while I rant about the thing. I'm a mechanical engineer, so I also imitate the sounds the machine makes.
My issue with this is that I'd like to be able to distribute the slide deck afterwards for people who can't attend. I've heard people advocate for keeping separate infosheets to accompany the presentation but I can't be bothered usually.
If my stage performance is unnecessary, then it would be better suited as an email than a presentation. If it is necessary, then they'll need to watch the video.
I'm not going to create the same message twice in two formats. If they disrespect my time, then I might not be a good fit for their corporate culture.
I hate these kinds of slides because I'll come across them somewhere and be like "WHAT THE FUCK IS THE CONTEXT FOR THESE NUMBERS??? WHAT DOES THIS HALF-ASS DIAGRAM REPRESENT?" and the information I extract becomes less usable as a result.
I often won't read PowerPoints in that style unless a recording of the presentation is available, otherwise I just pretend it doesn't exist and get my information elsewhere because certainty ain't optional mf.
I think if you've chosen your bullet points well then the point should come across through them, but if you're looking for a higher level of detail then the slide deck is probably not gonna get you there regardless. It's standard practice to record this type of presentation, but if you're really wanting a deep dive, you probably want to see the supporting documents, not just an executive summary. I guess it depends on what kind of presentation we're talking about, too, because a presentation to push info up to management is pretty different from the type someone might give at a conference.
I hate this. It's basically just a lecture with slides as the cue cards, which the audience can read for themselves.
It's like having subtitles in real life.
Ugh. Give me some data, graphs, or pictures of cats to look at for the slideshow or something. Something other than what you're saying. If you add nothing to what we're seeing, then.... I have eyes. I don't need you to read it for me.
PowerPoint, at least, has a notes section and a presenter view, so you can hook your computer up with the projector or TV or whatever as a second monitor and PowerPoint can be set up to use the TV/projector/whatever, as the slide show, and give you a presenter view on your screen which shows the current slide, and all your notes.
So if you can't get relevant pictures, at least put up something interesting to look at, and leave the cue cards notes in the notes section, so the audience doesn't have to stare at the exact words you're saying, as you're saying them, because I guarantee you that if you do, I'll be judging you on your spelling and grammar.
Yes. A good slide show contains a lot of visually pleasing elements that are easy to read and understand but they still hold a lot of information. Like graphs or statistics or just bulletin points with some keywords or single short paragraohs that tell how it is in a nutshell. Then the one who makes the presentation should tell the rest
A good way would be to write an essay with all the information you need. Then you would strip just the most important main elements and add those to the slide show.
That way I got the best grade from one course even though I submitted it late and lacked a lot of other tasks in the course. The teacher was actually impressed by how much information I packed in so simple powerpoint. I also had like 20 sources, did it all in on afternoon the day before deadline lol. Adhd is interesting. You procastinate something for weeks and then do multiple days work in one crunch. Medication would be neat but I live in a country where you can't get medication even if you smoke weed.
Anyways. I don't know why I wrote all this. I should be programming
Damn. Are you me? I'm not a programmer so I guess not.
I was hounded by one of my HS teachers to put in a little more effort, constantly.
I got annoyed by this and basically rage-wrote an essay that was due in the span of a few hours the night before it was due. Despite my lack of sources (I couldn't be bothered to look up the information), I still got an A on the paper. She stopped telling me to try harder. IDK if that's because she realized I didn't do poorly because I couldn't understand, because I clearly did, or she was just satisfied that she got me to do something and didn't bother pestering me about it, but regardless, I felt like I won.
I never did that well on anything else in her class. I just couldn't be bothered.
20+ years later, it turns out I have ADHD. So yeah. That explains a lot.
School before realizing I have concentration problems was mysterious time. I juat didn't feel like doing stuff and I didn't know why.
Also yeah your teacher propably just thought that you would need extra work to understand the course. I had a teacher who actually told me that when he first started teaching me he thought I'm a bit dumb, a below average student. But then he came to realize that I'm actually really smart but I just don't do anything. It felt weird because at the same time I wad proud that a teacher actually said to me that I am smart. But at the same time I started wondering that why I indeed didn't do anything.
I'm going to finally get my meds though, I just have to piss in a jar to prove I'm not smoking weed for like half a year lol. But I have gotten to the point where I don't feel like it's going to be an issue. I'm about to turn 24, weed used to be my coping mechanism to a lot of stuff but I have matured now and I feel like a long break would just do really good. Also I want those meds cuz my school isn't going that well and I want to graduate and get a job already :D the courses aren't hard but I usually lose the motivation one montv in and after that trying to finish the course is insanely hard
I was diagnosed a few years ago. I was 39. I've been on meds since.
My HS experience was fairly typical for an ADHD kid before ADHD was a thing.... I was called lazy, I was told I needed to apply myself (whatever that means), etc. I believed it. I just thought I was a lazy ass little shit. I didn't know why, but the evidence was clear. I understood the information, I just didn't do any of the work.
Oh well. Live and learn. I eventually made it through college, and into a career, all without meds. It was a painful struggle, especially when dealing with the more monotonous tasks associated with having a job.... I was chronically late, I slept in a lot... I was just all over the place.
Now, with the meds, I still have my hair share of bad days, but when I'm faced with the horrendous burden of monotonous tasks, instead of having to force myself to do it, I usually have more of an attitude of "whelp, I better get this done so I can move on". It's no longer an impossible task to simply get myself started on something that's not very stimulating.
That does sound reallu peaceful compared to this. I bet it was even harder at you time of youth when people didn't understand the condition.
It's honestly really super weird nobody noticed that I might be a bit odd. Like I had alll the signs now that I recall. Even some stuff related to asperger. But I just went straight trough the filters
Well, my parents weren't the greatest. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all that they did for me, but I rarely ever saw my doctor outside of getting shots or whatever... Typical stuff.
Basically, unless I had an obvious and physical problem, like a not insignificant injury or infection, we dealt with it ourselves. So I'm not surprised that I fell through the cracks, so to speak.
I did ok in school. I could have done way better, but I at least passed pretty much every class I took. There were some exceptions in college due to extenuating circumstances, but I got it done.
The change happened when I started researching ADHD because my SO has a solid diagnosis for it, so I wanted to understand them a little bit better, and a lot of the symptoms just resonated with me. So I took action, got assessed and now I'm medicated for it and I couldn't be happier about it. My brain works differently. I'm different. That's not a bad thing (could you imagine how boring it would be if we were all the same?). I'm proud of myself.
I'm not really shy about telling people about it, though I tend to keep it to myself until it's relevant... I don't go into a room full of new people and blurt out that I'm on meds for ADHD. But if someone asks, I don't have any hesitation in telling them. There's so shame in it, there's no reason to be ashamed of it. My brain works counterintuitively, and I've done my job as a human, and gotten treatment so I can function normally. I'm not responsible for my brain chemistry being all screwed up.
Anyways. I feel like I'm talking in circles now. I hope you have a good day.
It's pretty bad practice to just read what's on the slide. Presentations would be prepared in such a way, and known to a degree where the slides act as refreshers for the presenter with something visual to give context. There are specific cases where you can't get away from it, but those are incredibly specific and not very common. Like, safety meetings with specific things that need to be read verbatim to every employee, and even those still need something to break it up. I can't think of another example.
My best presentation at university was during a small seminar. It was a 45min talk about 3 papers and how they relate to each other. I procrastinate a lot, so I didn't really do anything besides reading those papers until the day before my presentation. That day, a friend called for a spontaneous barbecue, so I had just an odd hour to actually prepare slides. I managed 8 slides in total, the rest I just impromptu recalled from memory. People liked it and it was the least effort I put in any talk I held at university.
Honestly, that's the right way to do it if you really know your stuff.
The slides are there as a visual aid or backdrop. The "presenter notes" is where all your bulleted items and prompts for recollection go.
Also, and this is where a lot of people get it wrong, the slide deck is NOT a useful document for distribution. It is specific to both the subject matter and speaker; it's analogous to sheet music. A video of the presentation (e.g. TED) is far more useful as we're really talking about a performance. At worst, there should be "references" page in some appendix, with hyperlinks to actual media that folks can digest on their own time.
The best presentations are about topics you know well enough to discuss at length, and aren't constrained by paragraphs of points you need to get through. And a presentation is the best way to explain a graph or diagram.
It’s even more fun when your manager makes you do a presentation. And he schedules it at 10pm, so that all the people 12 timezones away can attend at their “morning time.”
But they don’t even bother to join the zoom. The only people attending are also in your timezone up way later than they want to be. And he’s like “it’s ok, we’ll record it for them.” Like wtf.
And then they go and do stupidass incorrect shit anyway, whether they watched the recording or not.
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