Last Friday, we had a division meeting in the office. Each Department Head took turn to present their deparments' achievement. I can't begin to describe how boring it was. And their slides - their slides were perfect opposite of what all the presentation gurus preach. Each bullet point was a paragraph of words in font size 14 (well not exactly, but from where I sat, they sure looked like). Almost all of them put up a screenshot of their timelines in MS Project. Jesus! Do we care what their timelines were? Even if we do, are we going to make anything out from the tiny fonts sitting at the end of the other side of the room? After 2 and a half hours, nothing from the presentations registered in my head.

I found this excellent article by BusinessWeek on an interview with Marissa Mayer, Google's vice-president of search products, on how to run a meeting like Google. She holds an average of 70 meetings a week, so she must know how to conduct one effectively.

A Google meeting features a lot of displays. On one wall, a projector displays the presentation, while right next to it, another projector shows the transcription of the meeting. (Yet another displays a 4-foot image of a ticking stopwatch.) Google executives are big believers in capturing an official set of notes, so inaccuracies and inconsistencies can be caught immediately.

I think the ticking stopwatch is an excellent idea. Coincidentally, I was telling my co-worker about it because Yahoo! Open Hack Day used that too. Alternatively, we should do it the Academy Awards way - start playing music when time is up.

Since we are at the topic of presentation, personally, the best presenter I've seen so far is Steve Jobs. He is a master presenter. Just watch any of his keynotes. His slides were simple, clean, big and together with his presentation, bring points across. Presentation is never about slides full of bullet points and reading off them. If that is the case, there really isn't a need for someone to be there reading for the audience, is there? You might as well just leave the slides there and let the audience read them themselves. Presentation Zen has very good articles on Steve Job's mastery. While you are at it, check out also Bill Gates' presentation slides and you'll understand what Zen vs Complexity is all about.