Making slides for a talk? How to make them more memorable (advanced tips)

Powerpoint deck on how to give a good powerpoint talk linked here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pmzloklxmmr5132/2019-0513%20How%20to%20give%20an%20effective%20presentation%20-%20advanced%20-%20CTLin.pptx?dl=0

I’ve been thinking about giving talks backed by powerpoints. Leaving aside the many talks on “Death by Powerpoint”, the lifeblood of the industry is on slides-man-ship in presenting new ideas to our own organization’s leadership, and at national meetings.

And then you see these lovely presentations by TED speakers who are inspiring, tell great stories, but DO NOT have to provide detailed scientific rigor underneath their high-flying narratives.

We, in informatics, have to contend with both parts of this conundrum: how to tell a compelling story well enough to capture imaginations, and more importantly, purse-strings, and yet back it with enough data and science to be compelling to our very picky bean-counters and scientists.

Further complicating this fact is that often, our powerpoints get distributed by email and have to STAND ALONE to convince others, sometimes. Therefore, the whole TED TALK, with IMAGES ONLY and NO DATA become useless in this context; now we have to figure out EITHER how to write an entire white paper (1-4 page brief that can be read quickly) to supplement any slides we give, or to modify these slides so that they CAN stand alone. Ideally, we can write a powerpoint slide deck that includes enough detail to satisfy data-hounds, and yet engaging enough, with a minimum of words, to create a compelling narrative.

CMIO’s take? Only you can judge if I’ve achieved my goals (see link). This is a summarization of more than a decade of my ‘doing it wrong’ and set of guiding principles that I’ve used to continually improve my own talks. I already presume that you know how to build a Powerpoint deck, and that you’ve read other articles on How-To in powerpoint, maybe Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen, or Dan Roam’s Show and Tell. There’s lots out there. But this is my take.

Author: CT Lin

CMIO, UCHealth (Colorado); Professor, University of Colorado School of Medicine View all posts by CT Lin