Advice I was given in my youth:
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RE: https://oldbytes.space/@feoh/116687129039392818
Advice I was given in my youth:
Print your slide on a full piece of paper. Put the paper on the ground. Stand on a chair.
If you can’t easily read your slide, neither can the person at the back of the room.
It flummoxes me that 30 years into using computers to show slides, tiny fonts in slide is *still* widespread practice.
@freakboy3742 Our strategy was to type your text in pica on a 3” x 5” index card and photograph the card. The goal was large font, but also less text. Ensure that any text is useful for the audience, not just to cue you. Don’t use your image text to cue yourself.
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EXACTLY. If your audience is reading everything you plan to say, then why are you there?
@killick
> If your audience is reading everything you plan to say, then why are you there?Umm, a popular blogger much-sought post ad-0driven income is now in the $10 ranges. Per annum.
The same knowledge at the conference pays around $10 too. Per minute.
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@nedbat @freakboy3742 … with poor contrast because some people think colors that look great on their hi-dpi monitor looks great on a projector too. And I mean both classic light/dark contrast AND color contrast.
@hynek @nedbat @freakboy3742 Related - some of the best presentation prep info I was taught was in a class (long ago) on how to use flip charts! Those basics still apply.
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It flummoxes me that 30 years into using computers to show slides, tiny fonts in slide is still widespread practice.
25+ years ago, PowerPoint shipped a misfeature where, if you typed more text into a text box, it would automatically shrink the text to fit.
When Keynote shipped, it did not have this misfeature. I believe this is 90% of the reason that early Keynote presentations looked better than PowerPoint presentations of the same era: If you typed too much text into a box in PowerPoint, it would make it unreadable for people in the audience, if you did the same in Keynote you had to manually reduce the size and that felt wrong.
Some time around Keynote 3ish, they also added this misfeature.
@david_chisnall @freakboy3742 i worked in consulting for a while. more than half the powerpoints we made were never shown on a projector, they were just an alternative document format for conveying information, to be read on ur laptop.
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RE: https://oldbytes.space/@feoh/116687129039392818
Advice I was given in my youth:
Print your slide on a full piece of paper. Put the paper on the ground. Stand on a chair.
If you can’t easily read your slide, neither can the person at the back of the room.
It flummoxes me that 30 years into using computers to show slides, tiny fonts in slide is *still* widespread practice.
@freakboy3742 also, when tempted to decrease font size: FIRST CONSIDER THAT YOU ARE PUTTING TOO MUCH TEXT ON A SLIDE!
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@killick
> If your audience is reading everything you plan to say, then why are you there?Umm, a popular blogger much-sought post ad-0driven income is now in the $10 ranges. Per annum.
The same knowledge at the conference pays around $10 too. Per minute.
Not ever did I get any money for giving talks at conferences.
As a matter of fact, one usually has to pay a substantial registration fee (typically somewhere in the range 300USD to 900USD, depending on conference).
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Not ever did I get any money for giving talks at conferences.
As a matter of fact, one usually has to pay a substantial registration fee (typically somewhere in the range 300USD to 900USD, depending on conference).
@datenwolf
OK. The fintech could have worked within other waves. The few I'd been sent by my then employer paid some $2k for two days of presence and 30min product presentation talk. -
@freakboy3742 also, when tempted to decrease font size: FIRST CONSIDER THAT YOU ARE PUTTING TOO MUCH TEXT ON A SLIDE!
@gekitsu
This was the advice I got from a consultant Sun hired to train engineers in giving talks. They argued you can flip slides faster and people will be okay with that if you one or at most two, concepts on your slide in big letters. -
RE: https://oldbytes.space/@feoh/116687129039392818
Advice I was given in my youth:
Print your slide on a full piece of paper. Put the paper on the ground. Stand on a chair.
If you can’t easily read your slide, neither can the person at the back of the room.
It flummoxes me that 30 years into using computers to show slides, tiny fonts in slide is *still* widespread practice.
@freakboy3742 Yup. This. You're not to supposed to make slides book pages of content anyways.
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@mdione If that matters, you’re doing it wrong.
A person in the back row can’t tell the difference between 8k and a potato. Assume it’s being projected at 640x480. If it’s not legible at that resolution, it’s not legible *at all*.
@freakboy3742 @mdione Also, plenty of 720p phones for those who can still focus: if you're handing out copies of your slides, they should read fine on one
(The bit you probably should check is the aspect ratio, especially if you've got code or similar)
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@gekitsu
This was the advice I got from a consultant Sun hired to train engineers in giving talks. They argued you can flip slides faster and people will be okay with that if you one or at most two, concepts on your slide in big letters.@ChuckMcManis @freakboy3742 yeah, i’ve seen advice to the same effect several times as well – and it’s remarkable how hard it is to stick with it. the desire to write it all out on the slide is very real.
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@freakboy3742 320x200, 4 colors (CGA
And pink and cyan are the only allowed colors
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@david_chisnall @freakboy3742 i worked in consulting for a while. more than half the powerpoints we made were never shown on a projector, they were just an alternative document format for conveying information, to be read on ur laptop.
@hjwp @david_chisnall @freakboy3742 This. PowerPoint is often used to write picture book level documents. Often to a standard content format, so seniors/those with short attention spans can just skip to bit they're vaguely accountable for signing off on. It might only be 10 slides, but each one has 6 titles, 15 bullets, and enough words under each one to require punctuation. So they are just distributed as "decks" of self standing information, no presenter required.
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@datenwolf @freakboy3742 I think that depends on the audience. When I was giving talks outside the UK I often quite intentionally added more text (and slides) because for a 2nd/3rd/.. language speaker it's common especially in tech that they are strong in written but not spoken form.
Making copies of the materials available in advance also works wonders, and unlike university lecturers your listeners might actually have read through them.
@freakboy3742 @etchedpixels @datenwolf When I worked for a German company, I was told (privately) that the execs were not understanding me because of both their English language skills and absence of technical knowledge. I was told to “dumb it down.” This was irksome at the time but I came to believe it was good advice in general. A presentation is mostly about establishing awareness and connection. People who have a genuine interest will follow-up with you later.
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And pink and cyan are the only allowed colors
@SvenGeier @freakboy3742 pink cyan white and black, not bad
ok, 800x600, 16 colors, not more
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D drajt@fosstodon.org shared this topic
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@wolfnowl @freakboy3742 If you read your slides out loud word for word, then people don't tend to register what you've said or written.
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RE: https://oldbytes.space/@feoh/116687129039392818
Advice I was given in my youth:
Print your slide on a full piece of paper. Put the paper on the ground. Stand on a chair.
If you can’t easily read your slide, neither can the person at the back of the room.
It flummoxes me that 30 years into using computers to show slides, tiny fonts in slide is *still* widespread practice.
@freakboy3742 I love this mechanic for testing readability!
We should come up with a variant on this for folks bringing up code or output examples in their terminal/editor/IDE!
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RE: https://oldbytes.space/@feoh/116687129039392818
Advice I was given in my youth:
Print your slide on a full piece of paper. Put the paper on the ground. Stand on a chair.
If you can’t easily read your slide, neither can the person at the back of the room.
It flummoxes me that 30 years into using computers to show slides, tiny fonts in slide is *still* widespread practice.
@freakboy3742 the other problem with slides crammed with tiny text is people tend to just read the contents of the slide out
I don't know why people put their speech on slides
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@hjwp @david_chisnall @freakboy3742 This. PowerPoint is often used to write picture book level documents. Often to a standard content format, so seniors/those with short attention spans can just skip to bit they're vaguely accountable for signing off on. It might only be 10 slides, but each one has 6 titles, 15 bullets, and enough words under each one to require punctuation. So they are just distributed as "decks" of self standing information, no presenter required.
@guigsy
The style that killed thousands of human souls and the seven astronauts on the Columbiahttps://cs.wheatoncollege.edu/~mgousie/comp401/tufte-powerpoint.pdf
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RE: https://oldbytes.space/@feoh/116687129039392818
Advice I was given in my youth:
Print your slide on a full piece of paper. Put the paper on the ground. Stand on a chair.
If you can’t easily read your slide, neither can the person at the back of the room.
It flummoxes me that 30 years into using computers to show slides, tiny fonts in slide is *still* widespread practice.
Canon (not the company) back in the day was a maximum of seven lines of text on a slide.
Nothing has changed.
