What Happened at PowerPoint Live 2006?

Ellen Finkelstein, author of the book How to Do Everything With Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 attended PowerPoint Live last week, and offered to be my eyes, as I was unable to attend myself. The following are her observations of the fabulous four day event.

By Ellen Finkelstein

Imagine an unlimited opportunity to ask top PowerPoint experts any question you want and immediately get the answer. That’s PowerPoint Live, the only conference dedicated to PowerPoint, and it happened September 17-20th, 2006 in San Diego.

Over 200 participants attended sessions for 3-4 days on design, delivery, animation, third-party software, and more. This year’s conference was the fourth, but my first. It was well organized by PowerPoint consultant Rick Altman. Some highlights:

• Makeover sessions, in which top designers showed us "before and after," using presentations contributed by participants
  
  
• The Help Desk, where attendees could sit and ask experts one-on-one questions and work through the answers together in front of the computer -- in either PowerPoint 2003 or the beta of PowerPoint 2007
  
  
• A trade show with exhibits by vendors who create software (and hardware) for use with PowerPoint
  
  
• Sessions in the skills necessary to create movies, edit images, and add sound
  
  
• Sessions about how to organize content, deliver a presentation, and so on
  
  
• Lots of prizes!

One of the best features was simply the opportunity to network with other people who use PowerPoint day in and day out. Over lunch and dinner, at breaks, and between sessions, we compared notes and traded stories.

As you may know, Microsoft has a program for experts in its software, who are called MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals). Many of the PowerPoint MVPs were at the conference and were available at the Help desk or just to catch between sessions.

At the annual Microsoft session, participants could ask Microsoft employees responsible for PowerPoint, any questions they wanted -- and get answers! Given that Microsoft Office 2007 is expected in a few months, this year’s session was especially useful.

Next year, PowerPoint Live will be held October 28-31 in New Orleans' historic French Quarter. For more information, go to www.powerpointlive.com. The 2006 information is still posted, but next year’s information should be up soon.

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Ellen Finkelstein is the author of How to Do Everything With Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003. Ellen's web site, www.ellenfinkelstein.com offers a free, monthly newsletter of PowerPoint tips.