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The 2024 Presentation Summit conference has concluded, with separate in-person and virtual editions. This year marks the end, or as it was labelled, “The Last Hurrah” of the in-person conference, with only a virtual conference scheduled for next year.

Both events were fantastic to attend. And after some reflection, here are 5 of my favorite memories of the conference this year.

1. SUNSETS AND STARGAZING

• Enjoying a venue in California that’s directly on the Pacific Ocean with a sandy beach, palm trees, and the Channel Islands as our view was wonderful. With temperatures in the 70s made for amazing sunset gatherings each night! Having the once in 80,000 years “A3” comet on the horizon just after sunset – and being surrounded by people that figured out how to take long exposure night photos, at just the right location in the sky, so we could really see the comet – was truly cool!

2. TLC CREATIVE WAS THERE

• TLC Creative Services was happily in many places during the conference.
  • We sponsored the event t-shirt swag.
  • We showed up with “Hello” stickers to accompany the event shirt and many had fun with them.
  • We hosted a PowerPoint Microsoft MVP podcast recording (and wine tasting).
  • Lori dazzled with a session showcasing real-client work (no NDA content revealed!).
  • I presented with a demo for 9 Microsoft PowerPoint add-in tools, showcasing real-world client formatting examples (ironically, 20 years ago I spoke on PowerPoint add-ins for design productivity!)

3. THEN AND NOW

• Conference Director Ric Altman insisted on a session entitled “Then and Now”. And it was, to my surprise, an overflowing room of people! The talk went great, and everyone had a lot of fun looking at the past and comparing it to the present.

4. 45-IN-45 and UNICORN FARTS

• Seemingly non-related session topics, all connected by presentation design, makes every memory of the Presentation Summit conference perfect. Nolan Haims, in a 45-minute session, delivered 45 absolutely amazing PowerPoint formatting tips! And the (in)famous Stephy Hogan took her AI session about creating presentation content to realms never imagined by a conference director (unicorn farts as an energy source)!

5. 22 YEARS

• Finally, as I reflect on my Summit attendee badge with 19 stars, each star representing a Summit I attended, I still believe I should have 21 stars! (Yes, I was technically a guest at a San Diego summit for a half day on my way to Montreal for a client meeting, and I’m still searching for proof of the other star…) Regardless, over the years I’ve enjoyed some fantastic sessions, had amazing offsite dinners with large (10+) and small groups of other presentation people, and in general having the opportunity to be around so many amazing presentation people.

The 2024 Presentation Summit with ~200 presentation designers, trainers and speakers is a great place to be this week! In addition to being directly on the California beach with amazing sunsets, we heard from amazing presenters from Guy Kawasaki to Sally Koering Zimney. We have been with many, many amazing presentation designers, we’ve being geeky and gathering around computer screens to see the presentation work of others, we’ve enjoyed group dinners, and even star gazed to try and get long exposure photos of the Comet A3 just after sunset.

Troy & Lori @ TLC

It is the unofficial rule holiday decorations are okay until the end of January – right? Well, that is the rule I am going with as we near the end of January. I am sharing the TLC Creative Services 2023 Christmas card that was sent out to many of our friends and company’s we get to work with.

And a quick look at the house all lit up for the holidays.

Troy @ TLC

Have you ever looked at a slide that’s clearly been repurposed and feels unbalanced? Modifying existing slides for new content is a great shortcut and time saver, but step back and look at the slide. Is the layout balanced? Are elements aligned to each other? Does the slide look “correct”?

I had the immediate feeling of looking at a repurposed slide when I stepped into my hotel room (this is really a hotel room I recently stayed in – but no brands or cities named). Instead of noticing all the nice things this hotel is offering, my mind was distracted (like an audience member being distracted by a poorly designed slide):

• Why is the art not centered on the wall?
• Did the room originally have just one bedside table on the right so the bed would be centered under the art when the furniture was centered on the wall?
• Was this just a bad art installation, or was the art here first and a new bed installed later?
• If the art was here first, what was the furniture like before that would make an off-center art piece look good?
• Wait…is there a problem with the wall that it cannot support the art if mounted in the center? Am I safe sleeping under this unstable art!!?

Moral – don’t create slides that let your audience get distracted with formatting questions. And don’t question the hotel room furniture and art choices, you are there for a short stay and will soon forget it (unless you use a photo of it for a blog post and then can be reminded of how odd it was for years-and-years!).

Troy @ TLC

I have been enjoying time in Madrid, Spain touring museums. Two days ago, Lori and I spent the majority of the day at the Prado National Museum – doing the 3-hour self-guided tour in just over 6 hours. Yesterday was spent at the Thyssen-Bornemisza, also part of the National Museum, where tired feet prevailed, and we did the 2-hour tour in just over 2 hours!

Within the massive Thyssen collection is a fantastic nineteenth and early twentieth century section of art covering impressionism, cubism, art nouveau, and whatever we call Picaso-ism. And in this specific area of the museum (basically an entire floor), my mind shifted to work and graphic design. Photoshop is part of my creative process, along with using many image filters. But looking at these artists from a hundred years ago (that was epiphany number one, art from the 1920’s and earlier is now 100 years old!) – what was their inspiration? Beyond mastering painting technique, they were inventing image styling that today we easily achieve with digital filters (epiphany number two!).

The art in Madrid is amazing. The museums are amazing. The people, food, and drinks of Madrid are all amazing! Amazing!

(all images take at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional).

Troy @ TLC

Last week I had the amazing opportunity to be at the Microsoft Bay Area campus and meet with the PowerPoint team. It was an amazing day experiencing the campus, hearing about the focus of the Dev team and demonstrating real-world presentation formatting workflows.

The key takeaway is, the Microsoft PowerPoint team is actively looking at the real-world use of the software and those needs take a priority, along with the big initiatives (e.g. AI integrations with CoPilots).

Troy @ TLC

For the 2023 Presentation Summit, TLC Creative Services sponsored the attendee t-shirts with some PowerPoint design fun .

“Be part of the solution. Create gooder slides.” We laughed, and hopefully the group of presentation experts that made it to Monterey, CA for the conference wear the conference swag with a smile!

Troy @ TLC

The 2023 edition of the Presentation Summit conference was this week in the Monterey, California area. The setting was a rustic conference center with meeting rooms that were lodge great halls and all meals with everyone gathered in a central dining hall.

It was an in-person only event this year (e.g. not a hybrid event with virtual attendees joining via live stream) and had a smaller number of attendees than in past years.  This year due to scheduling I was not on the presenting team, and not involved with the AV Production. But I was able to enjoy the event Sunday and Monday before flying out for a corporate event TLC Creative Services was supporting. A few photos of the general session “great hall”, breakout rooms, and yes that is a photo of the dining hall, because there was a lot of informal conversation and presentations happening everywhere making this also one of the valuable meeting rooms!

Overall, between the conference grounds setting, the easy to meet everyone size of the event, and personally being clear of presenting and AV production meant I truly had the most conversations with other presentation designers than any previous event. Thank you Rick Altman, for putting on another wonderful presentation focused event and thank you to everyone for the wonderful presentation conversations!

Note: there is a virtual only version of the Presentation Summit, November 5-8, 2023 using Zoom as the platform.

-Troy @ TLC

I had to share this setup from a recent corporate event. I am onsite managing the presentations for a large event, in what I call my “office for the week”. But this one was a bit unique.

First the tech setup was a single 8′ table for 3 techs (I generally have a 6′ table for my computers, monitors and space to have presenters review, and edit slides). Fortunately, I include a computer stacker in my tech kit. But what made this really unique is where the tech area is. I am generally backstage, or sometimes front of house. But for this meeting, the room was a bit small and in order to maximize attendee seating (~250 attendees), I was outside the meeting room in the hall!

On the positive side, I did not need any of the work lights I pack for the dark backstage environment!

Troy @ TLC