Slideshare's World's Best Presentation 2008 Competition Winners

Even though a lot of people talk about ‘Death By Powerpoint’, I’ve found over the course of my Master’s that a well done presentation with slides can be incredibly useful and compelling. (It’s not easy though: finding big images to talk to is usually the hardest part!). If more people read Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen or Nancy Duarte’s Slide:ology the conference room would be a better place. As it turns out, Reynolds and Duarte were two of the judges (along with Guy Kawasaki, who I’ve talked about earlier, and Bert Decker – check out his list of 10 Best and Worst Communicators of 2008) for Slideshare’s World’s Best Presentation Contest 2008. The winners have been announced, and the 1st place presentation “Thirst”, is below:

(Can anyone say “Presentation Zen” homage?) An aside: Duarte recently put up a great post about how to translate Robert McKee’s ’10 Commandments of Storytelling’ to presentations. Those commandments are:

1. THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE CRISIS OR CLIMAX OUT OF THE PROTAGONIST’S HANDS (OR, NO DEUS EX MACHINA ENDINGS)
2. THOU SHALT NOT MAKE LIFE EASY FOR THE PROTAGONIST (OR, NOTHING PROGRESSES EXCEPT THROUGH CONFLICT)
3. THOU SHALT NOT USE FALSE MYSTERY OR SURPRISE
4. THOU SHALT RESPECT THINE AUDIENCE
5. THOU SHALT HAVE A GOD-LIKE KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR UNIVERSE
6. THOU SHALT USE COMPLEXITY RATHER THAN COMPLICATION
7. THOU SHALT TAKE YOUR CHARACTERS TO THE END OF THE LINE
8. THOU SHALT NOT WRITE ON-THE-NOSE DIALOGUE
9. THOU SHALT DRAMATIZE THINE EXPOSITION
10. THOU SHALT REWRITE

See the Duarte blog for more details.