Use this skill for creating or refining an academic slide deck and the talk built around it: structuring a conference talk, thesis defense, lab meeting, or paper-to-slides deck; deciding the narrative arc and slide breakdown; improving slide design and visual hierarchy; planning rehearsal, timing, Q

Academic Slides A structured approach to creating academic presentation slides and preparing research talks. Covers narrative structure, slide design, visual hierarchy, delivery technique, and Q&A preparation. When to Use This Skill User wants to create presentation slides for a research talk User asks about structuring an academic presentation User needs to prepare for a conference talk, thesis defense, or lab meeting User wants to design a slide deck from a paper or research project User mentions "slides", "presentation", "talk", "defense", "poster talk" Before You Start: Three Questions Before designing any slides, answer these questions clearly: 1. What works are you presenting? They must share a coherent research direction. If presenting multiple works, they should form a narrative arc — not a disconnected list. 2. What problems do these works solve in that direction? Each work should map to a specific problem. If you cannot articulate the problem in one sentence, you are not ready to present. 3. How do you use related work to naturally introduce these problems? Related work is not citation duty. It builds the motivation for YOUR problem. Each related work you mention should advance the audience toward understanding why your approach is needed. Core Workflow Step 1: Define Scope and Audience Audience Adjust Domain experts Skip basics, go deep on method and results Broad CS / engineering Explain task context, moderate technical depth Interdisciplinary Start from the application, minimize jargon Industry Lead with impact and demo, light on theory Rule of thumb : Duration in minutes = approximate slide count. A 20 minute talk needs about 20 slides. Step 2: Draft Narrative Arc Use the outline template at [assets/talk outline template.md](assets/talk outline template.md) to plan your talk before making any slides. The outline forces you to articulate your key takeaway and narrative arc. Step 3: Design Slide Structure Break your outline into sections with claim style headers. See [talk structure.md](references/talk structure.md) for two complete talk structures and section by section guidance. Step 4: Create Individual Slides One idea per slide. Follow the 10 design rules in [slide design.md](references/slide design.md) for visual hierarchy and layout. Step 5: Build the .pptx File Use [slide creation.md](references/slide creation.md) for practical .pptx creation — color palettes, layout code, charts, tables, figures, and QA workflow. Step 6: Rehearse and Time See [references/delivery and qa.md](references/delivery and qa.md) for the rehearsal protocol, delivery principles, and Q&A preparation. Step 7: Prepare Backup Slides Backup slides go after your "Thank You" slide. They are not part of the talk — they are your safety net for Q&A: Full quantitative comparison table Failure cases (shows honesty and preparation) Additional ablations or analysis Slides addressing anticipated tough questions Artifact Sources from Other Skills If you used other EvoSkills earlier in the pipeline, pull these artifacts directly: Source Skill Artifact Use In Slides paper planning Story summary (task → challenge → insight) Motivation slides paper planning Pipeline figure sketch Method overview slide paper planning Experiment plan Results structure paper writing Finalized figures and tables Method + results slides paper review Anticipated reviewer concerns Backup Q&A slides See [slide creation.md](references/slide creation.md) for detailed layout patterns using each artifact. Counterintuitive Presentation Rules For the 10 design rules (one idea per slide, claim style titles, max 6 elements, etc.), see [slide design.md](references/slide design.md). The rules below are higher level mindset shifts. 1. Your slides are not your paper A talk is an advertisement, not a lecture. Your goal is to make the audience interested enough to read the paper. Cut 80% of your paper's content. If someone can reconstruct your paper from your slides alone, your slides have too much. 2. Reading and listening compete Text heavy slides force the audience to choose between reading your slides and listening to you. They will read — and stop hearing you. When you put text on a slide, you are choosing to be ignored. 3. Enthusiasm polish A passionate speaker with rough slides beats a bored speaker with beautiful slides. The audience remembers your energy and clarity, not your color scheme. If you only have time to improve one thing, rehearse more — don't redesign slides. 4. Related work is not citation duty Use related work to BUILD your problem motivation, not to show you have read papers. Each related work slide should advance the narrative: "This approach solved X, but Y remains open — which is exactly what we address." Reference Navigation Topic Reference File When to Use Talk structures [talk structure.md](references/talk structure.md) Organizing the narrative arc Slide design [slide design.md](references/slide design.md) Visual design and layout rules Slide creation [slide creation.md](references/slide creation.md) Building .pptx files with code Delivery and Q&A [delivery and qa.md](references/delivery and qa.md) Rehearsal, timing, Q&A preparation Talk outline template [talk outline template.md](assets/talk outline template.md) Starting a new presentation

academic-slides