For points 1-4, click here.
5. Bullets are bad, stories are good
There is no law that says everything you say has to fit in a bullet. In fact, teaching by bullet points was never one of the more interesting approaches in school, was it? Think back to the classes that you enjoyed. Most of the time they were the ones where the teacher related the material to real life by telling a story that illustrated the points. Which would you rather hear? A sound-bite explanation of the four pieces that need to be proven in a lawsuit over negligence or a story about how someone was negligent and got sued over it?
6. The actual content of your presentation is much more important than the slide show template you used!
I do about 80 conference presentations a year. For some reason, every single event feels that it must have a unique PowerPoint template for its slides. It takes anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours to reapply a template, depending on the presentation and what you have done in it. That is two hours that could be profitably spent doing other things — like, say, putting in content that the audience cares about as opposed to setting it in a template they don't care about. That is two weeks of my time a year when I can't create information and transfer knowledge but instead have to spend trying to figure out why somebody decided that a red font on a blue background was a good idea.
7. The purpose of the three-pane view is not so you can see which the next slide is
PowerPoint's three-pane view is great — for building presentations. It is not there as a substitute for rehearsals so you can tell which the next slide is. Hit F5 and use PowerPoint the way it was designed. If you're already in three-pane view by the time you read this, hit Shift+ F5 and that will start the slideshow from the current slide.
8. Don't put your audience in pain
Okay, so the general idea is to transfer knowledge. If you make the audience's collective eyes bleed by putting up white slides with a black font, something that is just horribly painful to look at in a dark room, you are much less likely to actually convey any points since they will be trying to look away from the screen the whole time. Also... It is not a requirement to have at least one slide in each presentation that nobody can read. Contrary to public opinion, you don't have to have a slide that nobody can read. That's what handouts are for. If people can't read it, why put it on the screen? Why waste the audience's time with it?
9. Be conscious of people with disabilities
Most disabilities do not interfere with a presentation. However, some do. For instance, red text on a blue background is impossible to see for people who are colour-blind since it won't stop moving. Red text on black has the same effect, and red text on green simply disappears unless they are completely red-green, in which case the red text just jumps around a lot instead.
10. 12-point font is not appropriate
12-point font can't be read unless you are right in front of the slide, in which case you need to move your head far too much. 14 points is bare minimum. Ideally, don't go below 18. Also... There's no contest to see who can use the most fonts. You won't get dinged if you don't use 12 fonts in a single slide. One or two is perfectly fine and actually makes the slide readable instead — an extra bonus.
