Off My Beaten Path

I’d like to detour from my usual conflict resolution posts to mention another subject which is an interest of mine: how to be an inspiring presenter and how to make great powerpoint slides. To get clued in, for the past four days I have been attending PowerPoint Live 2008 in San Diego.

This is THE place to be for presenting with powerpoint. It's the brain child of Rick Altman, a graphic designer and powerpoint expert extraordinaire, who has hosted this international conference since its inception six years ago. Leading design experts Nancy Duarte, Julie Terberg and Scott Schwertly are here. Lesa King, a graphics expert, presented on photographic design. Presentation guru Garr Reynolds appeared (live!) from Japan, where it was 1 a.m. his time. I sat in on two presentations by Carmen Taran, a communications expert. Even though her presentation was on captivating web-based presentations, which I do not do (the web-based part; I'm working on the captivating part), she was just too entertaining to leave after the first session.

Altman’s 2007 book, Why Most Powerpoint Presentations Suck, is a must read. Here's his blog: betterpptblog.

Duarte heads a design firm in the Silicon Valley, Duarte Design. She is at the forefront of powerpoint design. (You saw Al Gore’s slides in An Inconvenient Truth? They came from Duarte’s shop.) Her new book is just out: slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations. She and her colleagues also post to the blog: slide:ology.

Julie Terberg, a computer design professional, who is the principal in Terberg Design, is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional. With little advance notice, she made over slides that went from Death by Powerpoint to slides that sang.

Scott Schwertly’s company, ethos3, is the go-to company for presentations to Gen X and Gen Y audiences. His 30-minute powerpoint presentation had 400 slides!!! You can subscribe to his website and you can find his older, but timeless, content under his prior blog: storybored.

Lesa King is on a mission to help the world create and use better graphics. She is the author of Graphic Secrets for Business Professionals. Her website, The Graphic Reporter, has hundreds of free quick tips and tutorials.

Garr Reynolds is a presentation rock star. His new book Presentation Zen is a masterpiece, and he writes a blog with the same name, which you can find here. If you care about presenting, buy his book!

Dr. Carmen Taran is a co-founder of REXI Media, which specializes in communication design and elearning. Her book is Better Beginnings: How to Capture Your Audience in 30 Seconds.

And those were just the presenters whose presentations I was able to make. You can find out more about the conference here.

Late update: At the end of the conference, I was so jazzed to spend a half hour with Geetesh Bajaj, a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional, at the conference Help Center. Geetesh literally wrote the book (with Echo Swinford): Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007: Complete Makeover Kit (as well as the earlier book: Cutting Edge PowerPoint for Dummies). He gave me some pointers for a makeover of one of my slide decks and answered all of my unsophisticated questions in a patient way. Here's his website: indezine, which offers a lot of great free powerpoint stuff. Thanks, Geetesh!