Silicon Valley: Three days, three presentations
March 27, 2008
Last week I had a quick three days in Silicon Valley. Three days and three presentations that went like this: (Wednesday) Duarte Design, (Thursday) Microsoft, (Friday) Google. I even had a little time at Apple. on Friday afternoon. The weather was great and the mood laidback and relaxed.
Duarte offices in Silicon Valley.
Presenting in the Duarte theatre.
Signing books during the party.
The first night I was at Duarte Design in Mountain View. Over 100 people showed up from the valley, including about 12-15 from various Apple departments. They even had a live jazz trio in the corner. Duarte Design had a good "presentation zen" vibe going on in their offices (more pics in the Flickr slideshow below). I also had a chance to see Nancy Duarte's new book about presentations. It's not decided yet, but the release date looks to be later in the summer. You will definitely want to get her book as it is a good complement to Presentation Zen. Her book is going to be a best-seller for sure. I love it. It's not a how-to-use-slideware book at all; it's a book about design and presentation and visual storytelling. It's (obviously) very visual, educational, and inspiring. It's a beautiful book.
Left: With Ric, Program Manager for Microsoft PowerPoint. Right: In Ric's office showing off my gift from the PowerPoint team.
The second day I went out to Microsoft (which is only a few minutes from Duarte) at the invitation of the PowerPoint Program Manager Ric Bretschneider to present for the PowerPoint team (checkout Ric's presentation blog for loads of podcasts on presentation). This was very informal and a lot of fun. The PowerPoint guys were mostly from the technical side. Really a nice group of people. After the presentation, Ric walked me around the Microsoft campus. I presented in a conference room to about 30 PowerPoint employees, but I was blown away by the facilities at Microsoft. The main auditorium is awesome. Really a cool theatre with big monitors above the first rows so that presenters do not have to turn their backs and can instead look out into the audience and easily glance at the monitors as needed.
The talk at Google went well; standing-room-only crowd that asked some good questions. I had a fun tour of the campus and a great lunch. What's Google like? Pretty much like this. The presentation should be available in the near future online.
Update: The talk at Google is up now. The talk is about 55 minutes with about 10-15 mins of Q&A. It's an informal, very casual presentation style this time around. Perhaps there is something in there for you or someone you know. Google is as cool as their reputation -- a wonderful laidback campus environment. Great people.
More pics below.
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
Wow cant wait until google puts it up online!
Posted by: Ivan | March 28, 2008 at 12:19 AM
I think the link to Duarte is wrong, should be this: http://www.duarte.com/#3.0.38
Posted by: Stef | March 28, 2008 at 12:47 AM
Awesome. Great for you and cannot wait to see the video!!
Posted by: zenator | March 28, 2008 at 02:42 AM
FYI, the presentation at google is now up:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=981133485769247385&q=garr+reynolds&total=12&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=6
Posted by: Adam | March 29, 2008 at 09:14 AM
...and Garr is as great as his presentation. Thanks for coming to Google. I hope you'll come back the next time you're in the Bay Area.
Posted by: Katina | March 30, 2008 at 03:53 PM
. I had a fun tour of the campus and a great lunch.
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