In his last keynote Steve Jobs (no, I’m not a groupie) used more than 60 slides, but then again, you do have to look at the content of his slides (almost empty usually, no text and lots of graphics).
There is this rule that says 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30-punt fonts. I would think you’d probably have to bend this rule a little, but certainly not break is. The essence is good. Guy Kawasaki (an interesting blog to keep track of by the way) talks about approaching private equity companies for investments and that a whole different ball game than giving a conference presentation.
As of late, I try to kind of create slides that go beyond bullet points and if I may say so myself, that’s going pretty well actually. People’s reactions are good. Some examples of conference slide I use can be found in this post. Of course, this does not work for courseware and slides presented during longer events. People usually like to take slides with them to have a reference. This is a lot different from how things go at a conference of course. If you want to an audience to pay attention to your story and nothing else, make sure there’s little text in your slides. Also make sure that there’s something interesting to look at instead of just you. Graphics usually work and I even use almost-off-topic graphics (like the golf ball and hole you can see here) that only have a marginal link to the thing you are discussing.
p.s. these slides by the way were part of my session on architecture enforcement at our European Developer show SpringOne in Antwerp that was held last week.
