Presentation Summit 2024: Conversation with Rick Altman

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    Rick Altman has been hired by hundreds of companies, listened to 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 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: Rick, you are delivering three sessions at this year’s Presentation Summit that includes your Sunday crash course, Farewell to Death by PowerPoint. Tell us more about the crash courses.

Rick: This has been a very nice tradition at the conference which started as a way to leverage the popular practice of coming in a day earlier for airfare purposes. Remember the “Saturday night stay?” This no longer exists, but still dozens of folks like to come in over the weekend, and we accommodate that with a Saturday evening happy hour and our optional Sunday courses.

As for the instruction itself, we look for topics for our Sunday workshops that not only complement the Mon-Wed seminars, but act like a springboard for them. My Farewell to Death by PowerPoint focuses on the fundamental techniques and best practices that we think every presentationist should know. We believe that knowing these things will make the entire conference experience more rewarding. Same thing with Echo Swinford’s Template Creation Workshop: knowing a bit about slide masters and layouts will help with just about any other PowerPoint-centric technique.

So, while we do not consider our Sunday Crash Courses to be prerequisites for the conference, we regard them as the perfect partners. And at $95 each, it’s hard to go wrong.

Geetesh: About this being the curtains-down event for the Presentation Summit, what does that mean to you? Also, will the Presentation Summit continue to exist as a virtual event, or is it curtains down for the online event as well.

Rick: Curtain going down…that’s a nice metaphor. I’ve been hosting in-person conferences for 35 years – for as long as I’ve been married. My wife Becky doesn’t know anything other than this event that dominates and pre-empts our fall. It’s time to loosen that stranglehold a bit. I also have lost my taste for the $250,000 commitment that I need to make to a hotel and a summer full of stress wondering if anyone will show up. You know the classic bad dream of walking into the final as a college student and not having even opened the book? Well, mine is coming on site the week before but nobody has signed up yet.

So, I just want to simplify my life a bit – I think I’ve earned that, eh? I love everything about this community, want to see it continue, and want to be part of its continuation. So to answer your question, we will most definitely continue with the virtual conference, which involves none of those stressors that I mentioned. And we will hold other types of events to allow us to gather in person. We are still figuring that out, but one such event is already being planned: A summit cruise for February of 2025. And let’s be clear: this is not just for conference alumni; anyone can join us.

Geetesh: Do you want to share your thoughts about the Presentation Summit, about its origin, and the journey through some amazing locations?

Rick: I can keep time through my conference and my family makes fun of me when I say, “Austin? Well, that was 2011, of course!” Before that was Tucson, San Diego, New Orleans, and Atlanta. After 2011 was Scottsdale, Ft. Lauderdale, Las Vegas, Clearwater Beach, San Antonio, and Monterey. Most frequent city: San Diego. Most memorable? Probably New Orleans over Halloween week! My thoughts are all about gratitude: I am grateful for this wonderful community that has spawned from the event, I am grateful for the incredible spirit and energy that emanates from it, I am grateful for the family-like feel that the patrons bring to it, and I am grateful that my own family now attends and gets to meet my conference family.

And finally, I am grateful that our virtual conference can come much closer to in-person-like engagement than I would have ever thought possible, so we can continue the learning in an environment unlike what most people expect for a virtual event.

If our charter here on Earth is to make the world just a little bit better, I am gratified that this conference has done that.

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.