Hello, friends!

I spent this week at CodeMash. It’s the kind of con I love: close to my house 🤣.

Unlike most conferences I attend, this one is developer-focused instead of security-focused. You’d think dev and security cons would be the same, but they were not. I understood many of the words these folks were saying… but not in the order they were saying them.

Throughout the week, I attended 8 sessions and noticed a theme: no death by PowerPoint.

I didn’t see a single slide overloaded with 20 bullet points each containing a sentence.

No one read their slides to me.

The most important information was always highlighted.

It was glorious and reminded me of a fantastic YouTube video shared with me by my co-worker Robin Granberg. I watched this about 6 months ago, and it immediately changed the way I create slides.

You should watch it too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwpi1Lm6dFo

To summarize:

  1. One message per slide.
  2. Avoid sentences on the screen if you plan on speaking the sentences.
  3. Use size to emphasize the most important item on the slide.
  4. Use contrast to guide attention. Example: fade items in while talking to them then dim afterward.
  5. No more than 6 object on the screen.

Please note: it’s very hard to do this well, especially when just starting your speaking career. But I promise you, adhering to these rules will help your audience focus on you and your message instead of the slides you are presenting.

Speaking of slides, I am making a new PowerShell module for doing presentations FROM A POWERSHELL TERMINAL!

Deck logo. Pixelated word 'Deck' with a stylized deck pattern.

It’s called Deck, and you can grab it here: https://github.com/jakehildreth/Deck or install it from the PowerShell Gallery by doing Install-PSResource Deck.

Try it out and let me know what you think.