A word on visuals: Where to start?
The preparation of slides is a task for graphical designers not for scientists. Scientists who prepare their own visuals should develop a sensibility for this art. I show examples of bad and good slides, some issues you should focus on, and some resources. The preparation of a presentation's visuals is work of design, and unless a scientist has some basic knowledge in the discipline of graphic design, he or she should not prepare visuals. Now, the ruling culture of Powerpoint forces most presenters to prepare a "presentation", so it would be unreasonable to ask scientist not to prepare slides for their presentations. What I'm asking is that you prepare your visuals with a basic element of graphic design taste. Bullet point list are to presentation visuals, what junk food is to a person's diet. Take a look a this presentation I found at slideshare.net Stochastic Optimization: Solvers and Tools and compare it to this one I also found at slideshare.net