Have you ever wondered what is the perfect number of slides for a 30-minute presentation? Maybe your company has guidelines around how many PowerPoint pages to prepare based on the time you have? Perhaps you’ve heard of time and number stipulations in Pechakucha or the 10/20/30 rule for presentations?
Let’s look at those first before I give you my answer.
What is PechaKucha?
PechaKucha is a presentation style developed in Tokyo in 2003 as a way for young designers to give concise presentations to showcase their work and to network at a special event. The format is 20 image slides (not text!) and 20 seconds per slide, which totals 6 minutes and 40 seconds.
What is the 10/20/30 rule for presentations?
The 10/20/30 rule is a format introduced by Guy Kawasaki for venture capitalist pitches. You have 10 slides (one for each of 10 topics relevant for venture capitalists) for a presentation of no more than 20 minutes with a font size no smaller than 30.
Guy favors the 10/20/30 rule because he was bored by long-winded, text-heavy presentations. But I’m sure he didn’t mean that every business presentation needs to follow those rules. More likely, he’s making a point to encourage people to rethink their PowerPoint.
So here’s my answer. Unless you’re participating in PechaKucha or pitching to Guy Kawasaki, it’s MEANINGLESS to determine your number of slides based on the time for your presentation.
The slides are “supporting” materials in a business presentation. They are to support your message. Your message and how you communicate it determine how many slides you need.
For example, you may flash multiple slides onto the screen in succession and the audience understands the message in an instant.
Or you may show an image or a chart and walk your audience through what they see, so that they can gradually absorb the message.
There is no correlation between your presentation time and the number of slides.
What if you don’t use PowerPoint?
You may not even need slides. Here are two other options:
A flipchart – The image with this post shows a speaker, James Wedmore, at a business conference I attended in California. Notice that he’s engaging the audience by keeping eye contact (not turning to read his own text-heavy slides, as we sadly often see in business presentations here in Japan) and he’s supporting his message by illustrating it step by step on the flipchart. His message was clear and compelling (even if, as he admitted, his drawing skills aren’t outstanding!).
No supporting materials – When I coached 29 speakers for a corporate client’s regional conference earlier this year, I had the pleasure of dining with audience members (my client’s clients). When I asked which presentation they found most engaging and persuasive, the majority named the same speaker. He was the only one who had not used any slides or other supporting material. He had simply stood on stage and spoken from the heart.
So, next time you’re preparing your business presentation, think carefully about what will support you.
5 steps to prepare your presentation slides
- Ask yourself whether you really need slides
- Structure your presentation
- Identify what slides you need to support your message
- Create the slides
- Review the slides and ask yourself whether each is essential