Presentation Summit 2026: Conversation with Rick Altman

    Rick Altman has been hired by hundreds of companies, watched by tens of thousands of professionals, and read by millions of people, all of whom seek better results with their presentation content and delivery. He covers the whole industry, from message crafting, through presentation design, slide creation, software technique, and delivery.

In this conversation, Rick talks about the upcoming Presentation Summit 2026, being held virtually from September 13 to 16, 2026.

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

Geetesh: Rick, you’re leading four sessions this year. With so much ground to cover, how do you decide what topics the audience needs this year?

Rick: This is always sort of equal parts intuition and observation. Our collective appetite for AI is sky-high; it takes no genius to see that. But I don’t just want our focus to be Oh, how can we use ChatGPT to create slides faster.

Our view needs to be broader than that, and it needs to be more intentional. How can we use these incredibly powerful tools to reduce tedium, increase satisfaction, and above all, allow us humans to be more human? If our coverage of AI addresses those questions, I’ll be happy.

Geetesh: Your session AI, What have You Done for Me Lately?? takes a questioning look at AI rather than assuming it’s automatically good for presenters. Where do you personally land on that question right now?

Rick: I am all in. I have become a programmer, thanks to my AI agent. I don’t write a single line of code myself, but I better understand how, say, a Python script or a PHP snippet can help me analyze data better or display content in a more digestible way.

So, that makes me more capable of asking the right questions of my agent and get exceptionally useful output. This, in turn, makes my work more satisfying: this year’s conference platform is friendlier and more capable because of advancements that I would never have been able to accomplish on my own, but could pull off by my communicating my wishes to my AI agent and it (she, actually) writing the code for me.

Geetesh: You’ve watched this event evolve from PowerPoint Live to the Presentation Summit, through every shift in tools and formats. What does the Summit still get right that you’d never want to change, no matter how much everything else around it does?

Rick: The members of our presenting team are insatiably curious, forever humble, and exceptionally giving of their time. As long as that is the case, shepherding them will remain one of the most wonderful jobs in the world.

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.

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.