non-technical... rule for # of slides per presentation?

[Guest]

Is there a rule of thumb on how many slides to have for a particular length
presentation?

 

[Echo S]

Is there a rule of thumb on how many slides to have for a particular
length
presentation?

Most people try to cram in way too much stuff, so I'd always tell my
presenters they could have 1 slide / minute. Then they'd start telling me
how a specific slide was just their section break and how this slide would
only take 10 seconds and so on, so I'd cut 'em a little slack. But not much.
;-)

It seemed to be a good rule of thumb. It's definitely not a hard and fast
rule, even if you have hard or fast thumbs. (I, on the other hand, have a
teflon thumb. Can't grow a darned thing.)

 

[Guest]

I think a lot of it depends on the presenter, the audience, and the content.
I did one for an hour workshop that was about twenty slides long. It kept it
really simple because of who the audience was. But I also ran over because
the audience was very interactive with questions.

I've also seen some briefings go through thirty slides in ten minutes (speed
briefing), take 90 minutes to do thirty slides, and others run out of time.
Most often, in the kind of presentations, I'm seeing, it's about five to ten
minutes a slide because of the discussion involved. If they have 60 slides
and two hours, they're very likely to have speed through or skip parts to
finish on time.

 

[Echo S]

I completely agree with what you've said, Linda.

And lest anyone reading thinks I'm being totally contradictory...

One benefit of my "one slide per minute" rule was it forced presenters to
think through their presentation a bit. If they came back with "This is just
a transition slide, it won't take any time," and "I'm just making a quick
point here," then I knew they had at least put a little thought into it, so
they probably wouldn't be terribly off on time. Maybe some -- but not like
trying to do a speed briefing when they were supposed to be leading a hands
on workshop.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Back in the good old days, one of our rules of thumb was never to dwell on any
one slide long enough to make the wax melt off the overhead transparency.

We used to work with some really lively presenters who actually had this
problem... came back to complain that the wax started to bubble and run after
45 minutes or an hour.

It's a wonder the audience didn't rise up en masse long before that ...

 

[Guest]

OK - so I'm the renegade here. I don't use any rules...I just create content
based on the time alotted. For some reason it works.