John H., in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, sent a nice email:

Roger

I came across your book after attending a webinar a little while back here in Australia and enjoying it. Even though at the moment I don’t do a lot of webinar presentations, well none at all yet, I do quite a bit of face to face ones, and find most of the material in your book just as relevant for those of course.

I particularly liked the whole ‘less is more’ – I’ve always kept to a   minimum the number of ideas/points per slide, but the one point per slide is a revelation for me.

I recently did a presentation at an international conference where I had about 60 slides for a twenty-minute presentation, and in the process of preparation had broken down a number of my slides so that whereas before I might have had one slide with 4 or 5 points, I changed them to having two or three. The presentation was very well received. But one point only – now that’s radical, and well worth a try – though obviously I don’t have a lot of room to maneuver with that particular presentation.

I’m currently preparing a presentation to do next Friday so I’ll be keeping your book handy as I get it ready!

Keep up the good work.

John

John,

I am, of course, tickled both that you found it useful and that you took time to share.

I don’t remember off the top of my head, frankly, if I made the point in the book as clearly as I do now (but will in v2!), but the idea of having one point per slide is a directional principle.  I completely understand that it’s not always entirely possible.

Moving in that direction, however, does make a number of things easier.  One, (as you’ve done successfully!), it helps keep the slides moving, which usually helps keep the visual attention of the audience.  Two, having one idea also makes it easier to think of a visual way to represent the slide, making it easier to come up with a slide design that helps to make the point.

In a webinar audience remember assumption number one:  some part of the audience is multitasking (they are when face-to-face, too).  We’ll never likely command 100% attention, but thinking visually and keeping it moving will help ‘move the needle’ in the right direction.

Here’s to your continued growth and successes!

Roger