Oregon PDMA/PMF Conference Part 1: Best Slideshow Ever

I'm at the Oregon Product Development Management Association and Program Management Forum joint conference today.

The keynote speaker was Sam Lawrence of Jive Software, speaking on Collaboration 2.0. He had a great but not very deep message about how today, it's all about Web 2.0 - it's all about collaboration, people, openness, participation. As a keynote presentation, it was perfect - broad in scope and entertaining in tone. While he didn't offer any new insights, he did set up the deep dives in the break-out sessions very well.

I was most impressed with his use of presentation software (PowerPoint® is the most popular but I'm not certain that was the one he used). Most people use these things to present bullet list after bullet list, perhaps punctuated with a complex diagram. He used it completely differently. Most of his slides consisted of one word or phrase with an accompanying image, delivered alongside a rapidfire monologue. The slides provided a bit of an ironic twist to his words sometimes - think Steven Colbert's The Word. Most often, they punctuated his main points like exclamation marks.

I still have the usual problem with slidesets - I cannot remember much of their content. But with this presentation style and the purpose of his talk, that did not matter quite so much.