Vinod Khosla's Five-Second Slide Rule
Posted by Max Dunn Tue, 01 Nov 2011 17:22:00 GMT
One of my goals while at Presidio Graduate School was to get really good at giving presentations. Since slide decks are required for most presentations, making good slides is vital for good presentations. But the slide deck is not the presentation – you are the presentation. So if your slides are complicated and people need to take time to study them to figure them out, that means that the focus is on the slide and not on you. So it is important to make slides that can be grasped quickly.
How quick? Well Vinod Khosla likes to aply a five-second rule. He puts a slide on the screen and then removes it after 5 seconds. He then asks the viewer to describe the slide. If they can’t, the slide is too complicated.
How about your presentations? Can all your slides be quickly grasped with 5 seconds? If not, then go back and simplify them until they can.
(From: Forbes, Vinod Khosla’s Five-Second Rule)