When I was teaching computer science, I'd have slides that basically just gave a photo of a transistor, or one example of converting binary to hex. The rest would be explained in person or on a whiteboard.
A good presenter should be interactive in some form. The slides are a hook, but not the story.
In my opinion, slides should only be used to visualize information; charts, digrams, illustrations, etc. They should also, sparingly, demonstrate the structure of the presentation; think of it as a serialized version of your mind map. Any more information should come from the presenter otherwise.
When people start off every (let alone any) slide this way, I'm left to believe the presenter doesn't know the material and has resorted to teaching me how to read.
This is related to what uberman said, with the blatant habit of telling the audience over and over again that they are reading the screen verbatim for them. Imagine if newscasters announced every time the teleprompter scrolled.
Even worse is when presenters say "This slide speaks to..." No it doesn't speak. The audience can only wish it would speak so they wouldn't have to listen to the pinhead up front of the room speaking down to them like they were school children.
NOTE, I just sat through 2 days of slides, so I'm a little cranky.
And star wars pictures or similar crap to “make me laugh”. I haven’t watched Star Wars and even if I have I probably would rather you made the talk naturally interesting. Than insert a ba boom cha.
1. Don't read the slides. We can all read. Give us additional context that the slide doesn't have. But...
2. If the slide communicates clearly and concisely what you need to say, don't keep talking for the sake of talking. Stick to what you need to get your point across. And...
3. As with all presentation and public speaking skills, figure out what your story is. What narrative are you trying to tell? For example, if your presentation is on the efficacy of an experiment, tell us a story about it. How did we start this journey, what happened along the way, and where are we going? Why should I give a crap about your presentation? And how can you get me personally invested in your success?
Some more context on the last point, which I actually think is the most important one. Tell a story and make me care!
Here's an example. I was at a meeting where the ad tech team was giving a presentation on their progress toward quarterly goals. The slides were essentially numbers, and the presentation went more or less like this:
"About 1.5% of all users clicked on ads in our app. This quarter our goal was to increase ad conversions by 25%, and we actually increased it by 32% for an additional $X hundred thousand dollars in revenue. Next slide, please."
Zzzzzzzzzzz... BORING! Who gives a shit? Nobody but the CFO cares. We all get paid our salary, not some percentage of the profits. A few hundred grand in revenue means bupkis for me and my team.
Make me care! That's all I really want. I want to care about what you're talking about.
So... here's the real story. You put up a slide with only one number on it: 1.5%. Then you say:
"Only about 1.5% of our 600,000 active monthly users clicked on ads this quarter. We made $X million dollars this quarter based on ads alone -- and that's just the start! With only 1.5% of users engaging with ads, there's nowhere to go but up! With a little more investment into our ad tech roadmap, we believe we can increase that to 5% within one quarter, and 10% by the end of the year. That represents a 10,000% increase in investment! Our ad sales team will be thrilled, the ad partners will be chomping at the bit to give us even more ad revenue, and our bottom line will skyrocket! One-point-five percent! Can we get to 10% in a year? I say yes. Yes, we can. Let's do it. Next slide, please."
This tells a story. It grabs you by the cojones and says, Hey! This is exciting! We have a HUGE opportunity in front of us! Not just incremental gains of 25% to 32%, but an enormous opportunity to not just double or triple but potentially 10x our product. That means more budget, more projects, more engineers, more hires, and more more more! You -- yes YOU! -- can be part of this incredible journey."
And that's a way better story to tell.
