I'm in New Orleans attending PowerPoint Live and just completed day 1 of the conference. Unfortunately, I'll only be able to stay until the middle of tomorrow so will miss part of the 2nd day and all of the 1st day. The conference appears to be attended by a large number of first timers, cleverly designated as such by the single star on their badge. There are quite a few others who are veterans with the number of conferences they've attended ranging from 2 - 5. The conference is well organized with a wealth of opportunities to interact with attendees and a wide range of presentation topics for the novice to the more experienced presentation professional.
Partners and Sponsors
Among the Partners and Sponsors at the show have included Microsoft (lunch), Media Marketing, Meridia Audience Response Systems (cocktails and Trivia contest), Indezine (T-Shirts), Interlink (conference bags), Corel, Mimeo, Neuxpower, Perspector, Metrics Institute, Interactive Concepts, InfoComm, PointeCast, Prezvision, Right Seat Software (Vox Proxy), RoyaltyFreeMusic, TechSmith (SnagIt, Camtasia) and Turning Technologies. Tomorrow there will be an exhibit where each of them gets a chance to tout their wares.
Keynote Sessions
I attended two keynotes and three breakout sessions. One of the keynotes by Jim Endicott on "The Coming Age for Presentation Professional" provided a nice historical perspective on PowerPoint and how presentation professionals were changing their roles to a more consultative and value-added part of the presentation dynamic. The other was by Julie Terberg, where she showcased a number of animation techniques with samples of her work. These animations ran from the "relatively" simple to the more complex work she's done for her clients to use in trade shows and sales meetings. She really does some interesting and sophisticated work.
Breakout Sessions
Breakout sessions are set in three tracks - Tools and Techniques (T&T), Design and Deliver (D&D) and Beyond PowerPoint (BPP). I attended one from each track:
- T&T - "The New Age of Slide Masters" by Microsoft team member Jason Schneekloth was heavily geared toward PPT 2007. It was interesting and gave me some tips on differences between 2003 and 2007 when I elect to shift.
- BPP - "Video in PowerPoint" Richard Harrington, addressed some of the complexities of different video file formats .WMF, AVI, MPEG 1, MPEG 2 and MPEG 4, etc. I'll pull together my notes from this one for a report later on when I have more time.
- D&D - "The Mother of all Makeovers", Jim Endicott, followed up on his keynote address with a couple of case studies showcasing ways to more effectively tell a story. I liked his 3 points related to designing for the medium, a good reminder for anyone producing PPT presentations. His 3 focus areas were "mitigating text", the power of digital storytelling and less is more.
PPT Live Trivia Contest
The day finished up with three teams competing in a Jeopardy and Taboo trivia contest. With a range of increasingly difficult questions teams had a chance to showcase their knowledge of the ins and outs of PowerPoint production.
As an entrepreneur I always have to ask myself if the investment in attending a conference or joining an association is worth it. For entrepreneurs this worth comes about through professional development opportunities, networking opportunities or a chance to showcase your talents to a potential buying audience. For me, this show has provided some benefits on the first two of these and I wasn't trying to do the third.
My suggestions for improvements would be to include the company names of attendees on badges, not just their first and last names and the titles and city they've come from. I'd also suggest giving out an attendee list as part of the registration material. The real networking and value should happen not just at the conference but through the contacts that are made after the conference too. Another suggestion that I'd make is for there to be some sort of sub-group or session for the different types of attendees - corporate and independent.
Paul Gibler