You Are Allowed ONLY 30 Slides

September 1st, 2007

I have heard this before, but once again I heard from a client that they were being told to limit the number of slides to 30 for thier meeting. This is rediculous because the number of slides should have no bearing on the time/cost of designing and producing the slide or speaker time. Sure the is a differnce in presenting 30 slides or 100 slides but 30 vs 50 can make no difference in the time/cost of producing the slides nor the time it takes to present them.

The key is producing slides that help communicate your information. Cramming 4 slides of information onto one slide takes longer to produce than four seperate slides. More important, is that it can take less time to speak to 4 seperate slides, than 4 slides of informatin on a single slide. The information on the individual slides will often communicate the information more efffectively than the crammed single slide representing the 4 slides.

It is silly to think that condensing 4 slides down to one is gong to improve your meeting communication. Yes you should always look to summerize and make your point with efficient use of slide space real estate  and numbers of slides, but don’t fall for the 30 minute speech means a 30 slide maximum. The general rule I go by for slides is “less is more”. I have seen great speakers zip through 100 exciting, fast moving, impactful slides in 30 minutes. I have also seen too many horrible speakers spend one and a half hours with ten slides. What speaker would you rather listen to?

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