PreSum15: Heaven for PPT Specialists and Presentation Designers

For the second year in a row, we attended the annual Presentation Summit. This is by far our favorite event of the year and the only event that focuses on the knowledge and needs of presentation designers, givers, producers and everyone else that works heavily in the presentation space. If you’re like us, it’s presentation-nerd heaven!

This year SlideRabbit was lucky enough to offer our own course, Simple Wins. We explored some design basics and how to put them to use in everyday slide design. Some of that course covered basic mistakes to avoid. In an upcoming post, we’ll share some of our other tips and tricks. But first, we wanted to share with you some of the other fantastic things we learned at the Summit!

Dropping the Sales Pitch
with Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki headlined this year’s presentation summit and he was full of excellent advice. He reminded us that presentations are most effective when they are conversational and anecdotal. Next time you’re pitching a sale, try not pitching it. Talk about it instead. Have a conversation with your target client and watch the mood switch from adversarial to companionable.

Being Accountable with Microsoft

Every year, Microsoft sends a team of their PowerPoint developers to the Presentation Summit. They are generous and humble enough to stand trial (this year, literally) and field accusations, questions and frustrations about the software to which they dedicate their professional lives. This year we learned a lot about Office 2016 and the progress on bringing PC & Mac PPT softwares closer in line. We’re switching over to 2016 shortly and we’ll let you know how that goes!

Thinking Like Presentation Designers
with Julie Terberg

We spend al of our time taking mediocre slides and making them excellent. Even though we work in this space every day, we are still constantly inspired and impressed by Julie Terberg. In her before & after session, she took patron slides and shared her thought process on how to improve not only the design but the messaging. Getting a peek into the brain of another career presentation designer always inspires us to continue to push our design and content consulting to the next level.

Considering Brain Science
with Dr. Carmen Simon

One of our favorite topics is how to make your content more memorable and persuasive. We’ve explored it in a variety of posts previously. Dr. Carmen Simon’s session seemed to be designed just for us. Dr. Simon tells us that 90% of what we share is forgotten. Since there’s no way around that, we have to learn how to control the 10% that people will remember. How do we do that? We keep the audience interested and create surprise and delight to combat boredom and habituation. We took a lot from this session and are excited to share some tips in a future post!

Remembering Where You Came From
with Garr Reynolds

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Every year Garr is kind enough to take time out of his life to video into the Summit. For me, at least, Garr’s Presentation Zen was the beginning of an inspired career in presentation design services. Garr is always humble and entertaining. Although he spend most of his time these days being a father and husband, he never neglects where he came from. Garr’s appearance at the Guru Evening Session is one of the best moments of the Summit!

… presentation designers’ dreams come true:

We’re now friends with Garr on Facebook!

Whether your presentation expertise relates to delivery, design, technology or production, the Summit has something for you. If you love all things presentation like we do, consider coming out to Vegas next year!

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