While I agree with most of OP's comments for live events, keep in mind frequently presentations are shared, and not really presented.
Within typical business scenarios, presentations are forwarded to other people that were not present, so you don't have the benefit of the speaker explaining what that beautiful minimalistic photo of a turtle-in-the-middle-of-the-desert really meant. Even presentations from live events will be on slideshare, frequently without the voice/video track. The examples included on OP's post ratify my point; nice visually, but almost useless when shared without the voice-over.
There's no debate that ugly or confusing slides can and should be avoided. But bullet points don't ruin a presentation, you can tell a story one word at a time, and sometimes even info-dump slides have a role to play. See Mary Meeker's crowded presentations. See Steve Jobs's smart use of bullet points. See Lessig's one-word-per-slide style.
Bottom line: presentation style is like programming languages: you have to find the best one for the job, and do it beautifully. Understand the audience and the appropriate style, rather than rely on canned rules like "bullets are evil". Code as a craft.
Within typical business scenarios, presentations are forwarded to other people that were not present, so you don't have the benefit of the speaker explaining what that beautiful minimalistic photo of a turtle-in-the-middle-of-the-desert really meant. Even presentations from live events will be on slideshare, frequently without the voice/video track. The examples included on OP's post ratify my point; nice visually, but almost useless when shared without the voice-over.
There's no debate that ugly or confusing slides can and should be avoided. But bullet points don't ruin a presentation, you can tell a story one word at a time, and sometimes even info-dump slides have a role to play. See Mary Meeker's crowded presentations. See Steve Jobs's smart use of bullet points. See Lessig's one-word-per-slide style.
Bottom line: presentation style is like programming languages: you have to find the best one for the job, and do it beautifully. Understand the audience and the appropriate style, rather than rely on canned rules like "bullets are evil". Code as a craft.