Why you should attend PowerPoint Live

Coming up September 21-24 in San Diego is the only user’s conference for PowerPoint, called PowerPoint Live. I’ll be speaking on the Wednesday morning on how you need to design presentations differently when delivering them over the web instead of in person. I wanted to spend a few moments today explaining why I think you, or someone from your organization, should seriously consider attending this meeting.

• There is a limit of 200 attendees, meaning that you will get to make personal connections with similar professionals and won’t feel like cattle being herded from one session to the next. Those connections allow you to continue sharing ideas and getting support after the conference finishes.
• The sessions are very practical, so you leave with ideas you can implement immediately to improve your presentations.
• There is an on-site help desk where the top PowerPoint people in the world sit and freely dispense advice and solutions to your toughest challenges. You can gather a list of the biggest problems you and your colleagues face and get them all answered here. Think of how much time that would save.
• This is one of the premier gathering places for presentation designers, so you will see and hear the latest and freshest ideas from the top people in the business, like Nancy Duarte, whose firm does Al Gore’s Academy Award winning presentation, and Julie Terberg, whose innovative use of the animation features rival professional videographers.
• The focus of the conference is the use of the tool to improve communication, not a technical focus. While Microsoft reps are there, including the head of the development team, your focus will be practical, not technical, and communication, not features based.

If you design and deliver presentations regularly, this is a valuable development opportunity. If you have people in your Marketing, Communications, or Sales department who develop presentations for others, they will come back armed with new ideas that everyone can benefit from.

You can check out all the details at www.PowerPointLive.com, including the entire schedule of sessions, detailed outlines of the content of each session and the social activities to build those networks that provide the ongoing sharing of ideas.

I hope to see you there!