I’d have to agree with #2, definitely. #5 is also an excellent choice – I just sat through a session with Vic this week at our yearly TS conference. Vic is a VERY polished speaker that makes you feel like you’re having a conversation with him rather than getting spoken to. An addition I would make to the list? Chris Anderson. I sat through a session on Longhorn in which he presented this week. I was truly inspired when I left that room – I was ready to dedicate myself to drop being a keyboard monkey (read: Infrastructure Geek – you know, File Servers, DNS, DHCP, AD, etc) and focus on nothing more than learning how to write code. .NET Managed Code, that is. The advances that are coming are amazing.
Was it Chris’s PPT? Nope. He didn’t even use PowerPoint and the “slides” he did have had no snazzy graphics or animations. Most had just one word on them. Was it the fantastic demonstrations of WinFS, Indigo and Avalon? Not that either. As a matter of fact, Chris was having a bad demo day – the Indigo demo crashed and erupted into flames. It was the fact that he was truly enthusiastic about what he was talking about and reflected that in the way that he engaged his audience. It helped that he knew the content inside and out because he lived it every day. He didn't need speaker notes, he KNOWS this stuff. I don’t know about Scott, Pat, Hillel or Harry below, but I bet it’s a common theme among good presenters.
I often give presentations at customer sites but I also listen to quite a few presentations at various Microsoft events. While some of the presenters can unfortunately be painful to listen to, there are quite a few who I love to hear and possibly border on inspirational. They have the unique ability to build ppt decks that make sense (if they use them at all), to keep the entire audience interested, and to adapt their talk to feedback along the way.
Some of my favorites are as follows (in no particular order):
- Scott Hanselman
- Steve Ballmer, Microsoft
- Chief Pat Lee, King County Sheriff's Office
- Hillel Cooperman, Microsoft
- Vic Gundotra, Microsoft
- Harry Pierson, Microsoft
Those are some of the ones who are top of mind for me. Do you have any favorites???
this posting does not reflect the views of my employer
and is provided as is with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Related...
[Technovangelist (Matt Williams) WebLog]