Top tips for your first Powerpoint slide – Richard Wiseman

While many speakers focus entirely on the content of a talk, I put lots of effort into my slides. In fact, my ‘first’ slide is actually three slides that have saved me from many a technical disaster.

Here’s a typical first slide from my deck:

I use a black background and a 4:3 aspect ratio.

While many speakers use the modern 16:9 widescreen format, I stick with 4:3. Why? Because many projector systems are still designed for 4:3. If you project a 16:9 slide onto a 4:3 screen, it can get cut off or letterboxed. But if you project a 4:3 slide onto a 16:9 screen, it puts black bars on the sides—which blend into my black background.

I also put a green frame around the edge of this initial slide. Before the audience enters, I look at the screen. If I can see the entire green frame, I know my slides aren’t being cut off by the projector.

The public never get to see that slide. It is just for me to test the system.

Tip One: Have a secret diagnostic slide just for you.

Before the audience enters, I switch to my second slide. This one looks almost identical, but the green frame is gone, and it contains an embedded audio track.

As people enter the hall, my music plays automatically from this slide (with the speaker icon hidden). This does two things. First, it sets the atmosphere I want, thus avoiding that awkward, dead-silent morgue feeling or relying on the organiser’s random playlist. Second, it shows that my laptop’s audio feed is working through the sound system.

Tip Two: Use your own music to test the laptop feed and control the atmosphere.

Finally, as I am being introduced, I use my remote clicker to advance to my third pre-slide.

To the audience, it looks the same as the previous one. But if you look closely at the bottom-left corner, there is a tiny green dot. If I click and the green dot appears, I know my remote is connected and the system hasn’t frozen. If it has frozen, I can speak for 10 minutes without slides while the problem is fixed (hopefully!).

There is nothing worse than building up audience anticipation, only to find out you can’t advance your first slide. With these quick, hidden checks, you’ll never have to worry about tech failures again. Test.

Tip Three: Use the Green Dot Trick to test the system just before you start.