I have been having an ongoing dialog with a close friend of mine regarding PowerPoint presentation styles for quite a long time now. He is a straightforward content presentation sort of guy and aims for the one thought per slide approach. One of his favorite presenters is famed Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig. An example of Lessig's presentation style can be found here. Effective indeed. The "rub" with this technique is that the presenter has to be quite a talented storyteller to be able to pull it off. I've seen folks try to emulate it and fail miserably.

Speaking of presentation failures, a company called Speechworks conducted a survey that had some not unexpected results. The #1 pet peeve from the survey is not surprising at all..."The speaker read the slides to us". Can you imagine if Lessig read every one of his slides word for word with no other commentary? I've seen it happen. I'm sure you have too.

On the flip side, Fast Company ran an article not too long ago with a few guidelines from Guy Kawaski and presentation coach Jerry Weisman. There are some really interesting suggestions in there to think about. Test them out.

I try not to get too bogged down with rules and guidelines (the reason why many a golf swing fail), but I do aim for the following: 1. Design each deck for a particular audience, 2. Tell a story with a well thought through sequence of slides, 3. Use photos and "simple" infographics to get points across effectively, 4. after you've written your deck..."concisisize it" by cutting out all extraneous thoughts & slides. You probably can remove half of your deck. Every Time. Do it. I'll close with a link to a recent Zynga presentation, which I think is successful for its intended audience, messaging, and aesthetic.