Post #3249155

2026-06-04 15:59 UTC

@shapr@recurse.social @bittner@hachyderm.io @feoh@oldbytes.space Those presentations are the absolute worst for people to read afterwards. Slides with a single word on them, all of the context in the soundtrack. Great for not distracting the audience during the talk, but awful if you just have the slide deck. I've seen a bunch of those uploaded after a conference and just had absolutely zero idea what the speaker was talking about. The other use I didn't mention for slides is to remind the speaker what they're supposed to be talking about. If you don't need this, you often also don't need slides unless they have illustrations that are easier to point to than using words. One of the best presentations I've seen was from a USAF general. He didn't know he was expected to give a talk until about half an hour before. He had no slides and just a little deck of note cards. I saw them after the presentation, each had a single word on it. His entire plan was 'talk about this for a few minutes, then move onto this' and he did exactly that. Unfortunately, unless you had a recording (and it wasn't recorded) there was no way for anyone else to know what he was talking about afterwards.

Replies (3)

@shapr@recurse.social 2026-06-04 16:03

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange @bittner@hachyderm.io @feoh@oldbytes.space I agree. I organize a ~monthly talk series that is never recorded, thus my preference for this approach.

Open ##3249156
@bittner@hachyderm.io 2026-06-04 16:07

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange @shapr@recurse.social @feoh@oldbytes.space Slideware all have a "notes" section these days, yes? My experience is this can used both for the presenter and the post-presentation audience to fill in the gaps. To me, it's a good comprise. Granted, my bias is to make sure the audience, the people who show up in person, have the best possible experience.

Open ##3249157
@11backslashes@social.unx.pw 2026-06-04 16:24

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange @shapr@recurse.social @bittner@hachyderm.io @feoh@oldbytes.space Perhaps the first slide could link to a write up of what the talk was about in more detail? That would work around the disconnect between the speaker and the organizers. It seems like slides with a lot of detail on them would be more detrimental to the actual presentation itself, since the presenter would be more inclined to read off them. It also strikes me as weird that people rely so much on the textual medium for this; an essay or blog post would be much more suited to purpose. Otherwise one should just watch a recording of the talk.

Open ##3249158