I work in a high tech company and for the last few months I have been trying to improve my presentation skills. I searched for talks given by people widely regarded as good communicators. These ranged from Richard Feynman's lectures on physics to Steve Jobs' keynote addresses, to Al Gore's PowerPoint on Film, An Inconvenient Truth. I found many counterexamples in the form of Bill Gates' keynotes, NASA, and the Department of Defense.

Presentation Zen has some interesting comments on the value of PowerPoint to society and how the software has been used and abused lately.

I'll present my overall guidelines for effective business communication in an upcoming post.