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Look for text you can remove. If text is on your slide, people will be spending time reading it instead of listening to you, especially if the text is not in their native language. The text should almost entirely come from you.
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Often, text in your slides is text you're already going to say anyways. Remove any text you are going to say anyway, unless it's an important title or section change.
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When using acronyms, make sure to explain them on first use.
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Wall of text: Often I've seen a slide that is a beautiful or useful image, followed by a slide that is a wall of text on the same topic. Move all text into speaker notes, and have just one slide with the image.
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Make text specific. Ambiguity is misunderstanding waiting to happen. For example if you use the word "markup", but you mean HTML tags, then say HTML tags.
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Is there too much information in a given slide? If there's too much jammed into a single slide, you'll find yourself looking at your speaker notes instead of the audience. Break it up into multiple slides, and always look for more things to remove.
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Look for team/company/internal jargon. Eg, change "pre-release channel" to "pre-release browser" or "pre-release version"
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Increase line spacing. When you have a block of text, such as a code sample, it's difficult to read at a distance when too close together. Increase the space between lines in order to increase readability.
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Often you'll see a slide with a header, some descriptive text and then a diagram. Remove the header and text entirely, and incease size of visual diagram instead. Let the picture be the focus.
- Bulleted lists are often more like speaker notes. They're usually a list of the things you're going to say out loud already. Copy and paste the bulleted lists into your speaker notes for that slide, and replace them with images, videos or animated gifs wherever possible.
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Videos: Videos/demos in fullscreen - so the focus is on speaker and demo, not anything else to distract. Make sure the videos autoplay and loop, so you're not sitting there talking with YouTube recommend videos on the screen behind you. Especially if the video is short. I saw a cool demo video that only lasted 8 seconds, but the speaker spoke for a few minutes with a stopped video behind them.
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Master the animated gif!
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Make sure all your images are licensed for re-use, and give attribution per the license instructions.
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Remove most URLs. Listeners will try and type the URL into their phone or laptop instead of paying attention to you. Also they'll not have enough time to type it and you'll switch slides and then they're mad and ignoring you. If you want to share URLs, do it on a slide at the end of the talk, and leave it up long enough for your audience to capture it.
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If you want the audience to load a URL as part of your talk, add a QR code to the slide so that they don't have to type the URL in. You can also bring a Bluetooth beacon and turn it on at that point.
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If you're using a QR code to provide a link, make sure it's GIGANTIC. That way, people in the back of the room can actually scan it.
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Make sure code samples have enough visual space around them, so the code isn't crammed into a box. When the margins are too tight, it makes it difficult to visually scan the code.
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In any given slide, pick the one concept you want the listener to focus on, and remove all code that's not part of that. The rest is just distraction. If removing all the extra code turns it into pseudocode, that's fine, if the most important concept can still be effectively communicated.
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Make a solid background color on code snippets, and make sure there's just a single background color. High contrast background colors are like adding flashing lights around the code, making it difficult to visually focus on.
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Alternate the layout of your slides to keep things visually interesting.
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Try and reduce the number of objects in a slide to the lowest number possible, so that you are intentionally guiding the focus of the audience to the most important thing.
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Outline slide: You can say what you'll be talking about while on your title slide, if necessary. Often the outline slide is another bulleted list that can be removed.
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Thank You slide: The final slide in your presentation is your last opportunity to leave the audience with your message. Often that message is on the slide before the Thank You slide. Instead, remove the Thank You slide and thank the audience with your voice, while leaving your most important message still up on the screen.
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It's not possible to speak too slowly. You can see examples of this in any TED talk. They speak incredibly slowly, in very short sentences, enunciating each word. Slowing down your pace will make it easier for your audience to understand you, and also prevent your mouth from saying things before your brain is ready.
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Interjections: If you keep saying "um", "uh", "oops" or variations on those, try slowing down. Practice your talk slower and slower until they go away.
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Repitition: Practice your full talk 10 times. You'll get bored. But you'll get good at your talk.
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Find an audience to practice in front of. Get feedback and suggestions from your coworkers, friends and family. Don't be mad at them for their suggestions, or you might find you now have fewer coworkers, friends and family.
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If you're looking at your slides when explaining them, you have your back turned to the audience, so try to avoid that. If you are gesticulating at the slide in order to help explain a concept, just make sure to turn back to the audience regularly and engage with them while you're doing it.
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Put your phone on airplane mode before your talk!
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Always test your computer on the actual screen of the venue before your talk, to make sure your slides look ok on the resolution of projector system.