1. Don't read the slides to your audience. Generally speaking, the audience can read.
So what are slides for then? Well, if it's a text only slide, I treat them as being there to be reminders of what I'm supposed to talk about now. And that's it. The content is what I say, not what's on the slide. So there doesn't actually need to be much on the slide at all. Just a couple of bullets to reflect the high points of the conversation. Now graphics are a different story.
There are exceptions, of course. I've been known to do a slide with a massive list of "things" in 10 point font, with like 30 items on it... but when I do that, it's to make a point - a point like "there are a fuck-ton of options for X" or whatever.
The other thing I try to do, is put links and pointers to other resources somewhere in the deck, so that sharing it with the audience actually provides some value. If you adopt the "very information sparse" slide format, then the slides don't really provide much value to the audience after the fact. Whether that's an issue or not is kinda up to you.
1. Don't read the slides to your audience. Generally speaking, the audience can read.
So what are slides for then? Well, if it's a text only slide, I treat them as being there to be reminders of what I'm supposed to talk about now. And that's it. The content is what I say, not what's on the slide. So there doesn't actually need to be much on the slide at all. Just a couple of bullets to reflect the high points of the conversation. Now graphics are a different story.
There are exceptions, of course. I've been known to do a slide with a massive list of "things" in 10 point font, with like 30 items on it... but when I do that, it's to make a point - a point like "there are a fuck-ton of options for X" or whatever.
The other thing I try to do, is put links and pointers to other resources somewhere in the deck, so that sharing it with the audience actually provides some value. If you adopt the "very information sparse" slide format, then the slides don't really provide much value to the audience after the fact. Whether that's an issue or not is kinda up to you.