The Presentation Summit, Oct 7-10

A Very Talented Team

We will roll out our 2012 team of presenters and experts across the first quarter of the year. To give you an idea of the talented we seek, here is last year’s team.

Rick Altman

Rick has been hosting end-user conferences since 1989. He is the author of 15 books on presentations and graphics, including “Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck…and how you can make them better.”

Geetesh Bajaj

Geetesh does three things: he runs a PowerPoint specific site called indezine.com, he trains business users in creating and delivering presentations, and he writes books. When he is not doing any of these, he is probably traveling somewhere. Based in Hyderabad India, he has been a Most Valued Professional (MVP) for PowerPoint since 2001.

Ric Bretschneider

Ric spent over 16 years on the Microsoft PowerPoint team building features you both love and fear. He created the Microsoft PowerPoint Team blog, and a year after leaving MSFT he still has more entries there than any other blogger.  Ric founded the San Jose California branch of the Pecha Kucha presentation event, and can occasionally be heard on his Presentations Roundtable podcast, promoting excellence in design and technique through interviews of industry professionals. His blog at http://ricbret.wordpress.com offers thoughts on presenting and other important subjects.

Troy Chollar

Troy Chollar is a principal at TLC Creative Services, Inc. and is a Microsoft MVP for PowerPoint, first awarded in 2004. TLC Creative Services is a graphic design firm specializing in PowerPoint presentations with a focus on live-stage presentations delivered on a large scale, across multiple screens, with dynamic animations and high impact visuals. With an office of five designers, every aspect of PowerPoint is encountered and virtually no software-related request comes as a surprise. TLC Creative Services is now in its 16th year and has been host for the past six years of ThePowerPointBlog.com.

Todd Dunn

As an Audiovisual Presentation Specialist with over 20 years of experience in live event production, Todd has earned a reputation for making clients look and sound great. He is a former PowerPoint MVP and has served on the InfoComm Board of Governors and as chair of InfoComm’s Presentations Council. As an entertainer and musician, Todd has played with some great names and has performed at the Montreaux and North Sea Jazz festivals. To us, he is the go-to guy for anything related to hardware or something funky that isn’t behaving properly (or something funky that is behaving, like his alto sax).

Jim Endicott

A nationally-recognized executive coach and award-winning columnist for Presentations magazine. Jim’s company, Distinction, works with clients ranging from Fortune 50 senior executive teams to small business start-ups to communicate their high stakes messages with greater influence and personal impact.

Rikk Flohr

Rikk Flohr has been a professional photographer since the mid 80s and a graphic designer since the early 90s. In January of 2006 he left the corporate world in favor of his imaging company, Fleeting Glimpse Images, founded in 1998. Since then, Rikk has served the imaging community with a variety of services related to photography, graphic design and instruction,

Rikk was a featured-columnist for CorelDraw unleashed magazine, writing about various Digital Photography and Image Editing topics. He teaches at national software conferences like CorelWorld, the CorelDraw User’s Conference, PowerPoint Live and the Presentation Summit. Rikk regularly presents at regional photographic societies and teaches a variety of topics in digital capture and processing. Three times, Rikk has served as Artist in Residence at Badlands National Park. In addition, Rikk conducts workshops, both in classroom and in the field on all aspects of digital imaging. Rikk recently announced a series of Badlands photography workshops. He currently serves as Field and Classroom Instructor for Worldesigns Photo’s Costa Rica tours and is a veteran of 6 photography expeditions to this Central American country.

Rikk currently maintains two blogs: Fleeting Glimpse Images Weblog on all things imaging and Holy Crop! a blog devoted solely to cropping of images.

Nigel Holmes

Nigel Holmes moved to America in 1978 to work for Time Magazine. He became graphics director and stayed there for 16 years. Despite academic criticism, he remains committed to the power of pictures and humor to help people understand otherwise abstract numbers and difficult scientific concepts, whether in print or in presentations.

His most recent books are “Wordless Diagrams” and “Nigel Holmes on Information Design,” and a book for children, “Pinhole and the Adventure to the Jungle.”

Sandra Johnson

A Microsoft Office PowerPoint MVP, Sandy has more than 20 years graphic design and strategic marketing communications experience, developing and successfully implementing marketing communications programs for her clients. Her technical expertise and creative PowerPoint design and strategic consultation skills have made her a valuable resource for her clients since forming her business in 2001. A conference patron since 2004 before joining the team as a presenter and Help Center guru, Sandy can brag the role of creative editor for Rick Altman’s Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck series.

Connie Malamed

Connie Malamed consults, presents, and writes in the fields of visual communication, online learning and information design. She is the author of Visual Language For Designers: Creating Graphics That People Understand, which presents research-inspired design guidelines. She has her own consulting company, Connie Malamed Consulting.

Lisa B. Marshall

Lisa B. Marshall is dedicated to developing productivity and success through better communication; part business improvement, part self-improvement, part motivation and guidance. Lisa creates change and growth through seminars, keynotes, online training, and books.

She is host of one of the top business podcasts, “The Public Speaker,” and author of “The P ublic Speakers’s Guide to Ace Your Interview” [Macmillan Audio].  Her real passion, however, is helping audiences communicate better through keynotes, seminars, and online training.

Wayne Michael

Wayne Michael is the Director of Education and Marketing Operations for Novogradac & Company LLP, a top 40 public accounting firm. He works extensively with presentation design and implementation in Novogradac’s training and education program. Wayne specializes in simplifying complex technical subject matter (like the internal revenue code) for audiences of varying levels of experience.

Olivia Mitchell

Olivia is a presentation trainer based in Wellington, New Zealand. With partner Tony Burns, they do business as Effective Speaking. She and Tony have jointly developed a successful practice of over 10 years and Olivia has been involved in public speaking as a (deep breath): lawyer, city council manager, management trainer at a bank, political candidate, small business owner, and as a presentation skills trainer.

Nick Morgan

A passionate teacher, Nick is committed to helping people find clarity in their thinking and ideas—and then delivering them with panache. He has been commissioned by Fortune 50 companies to write for many CEOs and presidents. He has coached people to give Congressional testimony, to appear on the Today Show, and to take on the investment community. He has worked widely with political and educational leaders. And he has helped design conferences and prepare keynote speeches around the world.

Dave Paradi

Dave has authored or co-authored six books including “The Visual Slide Revolution,” selected as one of the Top 10 Business Books of 2008.  His ideas have been featured by the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft, Harvard and many others. His clients range from municipalities to Fortune 500 corporations and he consulted on a presentation used to brief one of President Obama’s cabinet ministers. Dave is an Adjunct Faculty member at Rush University in Chicago.  He is also a Professional member and past National Director of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers.

Garr Reynolds

Appearing virtually from his home in Osaka Japan, Garr is the author of “PresentationZen” and “The Naked Presenter” and one of the most well-known spokespeople for the presentation community. Garr is a former Apple evangelist and his day job is as a marketing professor for a small college in Japan. He also is a jazz lover, and it is already in his contract that when he visits us in person, he must jam with Todd…

Steve Rindsberg

An MVP since 1996, Steve has assisted PowerPoint users online for ten years. He has conducted numerous seminars and written magazine articles and books on PowerPoint. In a former life, he ran a slide service bureau and learned far more about PostScript and Acrobat PDF than is reasonable for a growing boy. He is the author of many of the popular PPTools PowerPoint add-ins. He swears he talked Rick into hosting this conference in the first place. [Editor’s note: He did...]

Glenna Shaw

Glenna Shaw is a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with 25 years experience managing projects that range from hundreds to many millions of dollars.  Glenna specializes in information design and data visualizations in the form of presentations, project management tools, dashboards, demos, prototypes and system user interfaces. Glenna has been a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP since January 2004.

Capitalizing on her experience as a mental health therapist in the Navy, Glenna has recently been writing a series of tutorials about sensory psychology and presentations on her website: visualology.net

Echo Swinford

Echo began making slides as a medical meeting planner in 1997 and just never stopped. She uses PowerPoint as the basis for webcasts, CDs, and online applications. Her website is graced by dozens of downloadables and helpful documents, and she has been a member of the MVP team since 2000.

Carmen Taran

Dr. Taran has helped companies revolutionize the way they communicate and relate to their employees and clients. A co-founder at Rexi Media, Carmen’s focus is on communication design, applied in face-to-face, virtual, or on-demand settings. A published author, she has kept audiences alert and entertained in the United States, Canada, Taiwan, China, and Japan.

Julie Terberg

Julie specializes in designing creative presentations. As the owner of Terberg Design, Julie helps presenters better communicate their ideas with an audience through the use of clear visual concepts and images. She is a member of the Microsoft PowerPoint MVP team and enjoys sharing knowledge with other presentation designers.

Jon Thomas

Jon Thomas is a digital storyteller and presentation designer with a passion for helping organizations and brands effectively tell their stories, engage audiences, and build deep relationships. Jon is the founder of Presentation Advisors, a presentation design and training firm, and the Director of Communications at Story Worldwide, the first post-advertising agency. He is an avid blogger on presentation design, speaking, and marketing topics at www.presentationadvisors.com and www.postadvertising.com.

When he’s not telling stories, Jon can be found competing and training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, playing volleyball, cheering on his Boston sports teams or indulging in ice cream.

John Wilson

John has been a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP for the last four years and is a director of PPTAlchemy, a UK-based company specializing in writing custom VBA code for corporate users (where a sign on the wall states “Impossible Projects May Take a Little Longer.”) John writes PowerPoint and Excel addins for major companies around the world and in a previous life was a qualified white water kayak and mountaineering instructor.