Do you use slides during your presentations?

In the scientific world, slides are almost always part of the package. And that is totally fine. They can be very useful.

If used correctly ✅

But often, they are misused: full of information, messy, and stealing the focus from your story. Your audience cannot read walls of text 📚 or try to decipher what figure 7 represents 🔍 and follow what you are saying.

So guess what usually wins?

The slides. And your message gets lost 😕

But your message is what truly matters. Something of value you give to your audience, be it educational, entertaining, motivational, or a little bit of everything.
And slides should be used to support that.

Unless you are in a contest for “who has better slides”, they are not the star of the show.

You are. 🌟

So keep that in mind when preparing your next talk.