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@jeremy-w
Created December 3, 2013 17:48
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Some links useful when putting together a presentation.

Use 4 main colors or so. 90pt–300pt font, 150pt average. Use words as shapes; use very few words. Repeat visual patterns to structure: colors, symbols, badges. Recapitulate before moving on.

Record yourself; post your talk immediately; magnify your audience. React, don’t anticipate: ground your talks in reality. A detailed blog post can be a good way to gauge audience interest and your depth of knowledge of the topic. Be excited about your talk.

Recommends QuickTime screen recording. Watch out for the green screen of death though; consider rebooting before recording. I’ve had QuickTime screen recordings turn out to be audio + just a flat green screen before, and since there’s no preview while recording, you don’t know till after you’ve finished the 45-minute talk! :( So, uh, consider using something other than QuickTime for actually important things. Don’t wait on the conference to post the talk.

Data presentation guidelines. See the ”News Apps Style Guide”.

Color picking. Found via propublica. Also pair with Color Oracle to make sure color blind people can tell what’s up.

Motivate: Explain why people should care. Talk about an idea, not a paper. Don’t overwhelm the viewer, and avoid both code and math, since those require distracting amounts of processing. Break down graphs even into several steps.

”what is the one thing listeners should remember from your talk? You should know this, and your audience should too -- tell them!”

Provides a very useful test pattern slide to verify your projector is actually working and sanely configured.

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