academic-slides

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
Step 2: Draft narrative arc (outline)
Step 3: Design slide structure (section breakdown)
Step 4: Create individual slides (one idea per slide)
Step 5: Build the .pptx file (layouts, figures, charts, QA)
Step 6: Rehearse and time
Step 7: Prepare backup slides (for Q&A)

Step 1: Define Scope and Audience

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 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 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 for visual hierarchy and layout.

Step 5: Build the .pptx File

Use slide-creation.md for practical .pptx creation — color palettes, layout code, charts, tables, figures, and QA workflow.

Dependencies: pip install "markitdown[pptx]" pillow (also listed in requirements.txt at the skill root) for text extraction and QA, plus the Node packages named in the Setup section of slide-creation.md. Install into the environment the user is working in.

Step 6: Rehearse and Time

See 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:

See 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. 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."

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