Presentation Summit 2024: Conversation with Ric Bretschneider


Presentation Summit 2024: Conversation with Ric Bretschneider

Created: Tuesday, September 10, 2024 posted by at 9:45 am

Updated: at


1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading...

Ric Bretschneider

Ric Bretschneider
    
Ric Bretschneider spent 17 years working on the Microsoft PowerPoint team, building features you both love and fear. Along with his passion for software design, he has spent many years teaching users’ good presentation practices and fighting “Death by PowerPoint” through hard and soft skill building. He created the Microsoft PowerPoint Team blog, writing more entries there than any other individual blogger, and still writes on the subject today.

In this conversation, Ric talks about his participation at the upcoming Presentation Summit 2024, being held on location in Oxnard, CA this year from October 20 to 23, 2024, and virtually from November 3 to 6, 2024.

Indezine.com is the official media partner for the Presentation Summit.

Geetesh: Ric, your sessions stand out for a unique reason: it’s not just you who preps, but even the attendees must get ready to some extent. Can you tell us more about audience involvement in all your three sessions: The Guru Session, PowerPoint Karaoke, and The Miracle of Pecha Kucha?

Ric: I hadn’t really thought about it that way but it’s mostly true. The answer is they’re all incredibly different, so let’s take them one at a time in reverse order!

The Pecha Kucha session starts about eight weeks before we gather at the Summit. Rick Altman sends out a call for volunteers and we typically go with five or six of them for the session. If you’re interested in volunteering you can watch for that mail, or write to me directly through my web site. I spend time with each of them, virtually through email and occasional phone calls, teaching them how to do a Pecha Kucha presentation and helping them produce their own presentation using that format. I typically send out a lesson a week, the pace is fairly slow because people have day jobs and I don’t want them to burn out, so it’s a pretty relaxed pace.

I should explain as well that Pecha Kucha presentations are somewhat unique. They follow two rules:

  1. Each slide deck contains exactly 20 slides.
  2. And when presented, each slide automatically advances to the next slide every 20 seconds.

The presentations are 6 minutes and 40 seconds, and they can be on anything the presenter wants to present. Typically, we get presentations on life experiences, things they’re learning or have mastered, etc. It’s a popular session because the audience is invariably entertained, and everyone learns techniques for making concise, inventive and entertaining presentations that they can use in their own work.

The PowerPoint Karaoke session on the other hand is open to spontaneous volunteers from the audience. Kind of like a TV game show for presenters. While Pecha Kucha is very specific on timing, PowerPoint Karaoke is very forgiving of time frame and can stretch or be compressed very easily.

Basically, this is an improvisation exercise. Presenters take turns presenting around 10 slides that they have never seen before. They’re encouraged to tell a story, using the slides as inspiration, and after that they’re free to do whatever they want. Again, the audiences laugh a lot, and one presenter will inspire others to jump up and try it for themselves, just like singing Karaoke. If you really want to reserve a Karaoke spot, you can write to me using the link above.

I started doing PowerPoint Karaoke as a group warm-up for my local Pecha Kucha events. It was perfect, exceeded expectations as many folks starting coming specifically for the Karaoke. They still stayed for the Pecha Kucha, but there was enough interest that I started getting called on to do it for conventions, particularly Science Fiction and Fantasy conventions. I was recently contacted by a national improv group called Comedy Sportz, and they asked if I would be willing to bring PowerPoint Karaoke to their regular shows, and I think I’m going to take them up on their offer.

The Guru Session is an open discussion group without agenda. It’s part tech support, part therapy session. People should show up ready to discuss their love of PowerPoint and presenting. Yes, I’m serious about that. But we do appreciate the therapeutic value of discussing the things that drive you crazy in the same areas. Sometimes there are solutions, sometimes it’s just getting it all out there and knowing you’re not alone. But mostly it’s about love. And sometimes I do magic tricks.

Geetesh: Some readers might not know you were once a key player on the PowerPoint product team. Can you share more about that and your unique perspective on PowerPoint’s evolution as both a creator and user?

Ric: Everyone who’s put in time on the PowerPoint team is a key player. I just got there early.

I spent seventeen years listening to customers, and designing features to help with their work, trying to make it easier and better. At one time or another I worked in every area of the product. Some features I’m most proud of include the presentation wizards, save as HTML (and using HTML as a PowerPoint file format), hyperlinks in slide shows, Presenter view, and PowerPoint presentations in the browser to name a few. I did have fun doing the first comprehensive set of clip art back in 1993, although one all-night session of testing and naming images did cause some interesting hallucinations just before dawn.

Ric's whiteboard

Ric's whiteboard

It was a very creative part of my life and had a lasting effect on me. You know how some folks have dreams about being back in school and running around trying to find their classes, their pants, or get their homework done late. I have those dreams, but they all take place in the Microsoft offices.

Here’s a fun fact: PowerPoint was not the first presentation program I worked on! Prior to Microsoft I worked at a company named Ashton-Tate, mostly known for their database program dBase. I was on the Macintosh product team and got drafted into a think-tank group that was:

  1. Anticipating what that new Microsoft Windows product would need by way of software, and
  2. Doing preliminary work on a windows program that would create slide shows for business. It was named Fulcrum.

That product never shipped because Ashton-Tate ran out of cash, got sold, and then dismantled. Ironically, I was still under NDA for Fulcrum when I interviewed at Microsoft, so I couldn’t mention it!

Geetesh: As part of the Presentation Summit since the very first event, what are your thoughts on this possibly being the last conference? What does this event mean to you?

Ric: Actually, I think Rick should have stopped at 20. I think it’s a more numerologically solid number, sounds prestigious and planned. Numbers that aren’t multiples of 5 just sound sloppy.

All kidding aside, it’s going to be a relief mixed with a bit of sorrow. I put a lot of time and energy (and cash) into attending and presenting at Summit. But I’ve really enjoyed the audiences we’ve attracted and the feedback I’ve gotten from them. I have so many friends I’ve made there over the years, and I know I’ll be seeing a bit less of a lot of them. I would encourage everyone to keep touch by joining the Presentation Guild, where another community full of much the same people has grown up over the last ten years. I know that will fill in some of the gaps when Summit leaves.

What is the Presentation Summit?

Presentation Summit 2024: Conversation with Ric Bretschneider

Presentation Summit 2024: Conversation with Ric Bretschneider

For over two decades, Rick Altman has been hosting the Presentation Summit, a highly popular event that is geared towards users of PowerPoint and other presentation platforms.

Indezine.com is the official media partner for the Presentation Summit.

In-person: October 20 to 23, 2024 at Oxnard, CA
Virtual: November 3 to 6, 2024

Register now!

      

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.




Related Posts

Microsoft and the Office logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

Plagiarism will be detected by Copyscape

© 2000-2025, Geetesh Bajaj - All rights reserved.

since November 02, 2000