SlideShare has announced it's first World’s Best Presentation Contest. See the rules here or read the pitch below :
SlideShare's users will vote on the entries while the contest is on. The winning entries will be decided by (the) panel of judges, which is comprised of the who's who of the presentation world. The People's Choice prizes will be decided on the basis of the votes polled. Winners will be announced one week after the contest ends.
The famous judges are presentation gurus Guy Kawasaki, Garr Reynolds, Bert Decker and Jerry Weisman.
The 3 first prizes are : an Alienware laptop and 2 XBox 360
Provided the quality of the grand jury, I guess the winning presentation will have to really be an outstanding one. Both in terms of design - graphic design, overall concept - and content - the topic and the story. In the meantime, it will have to pass through the votes of the rest of the people. Here starts the real issue. Weisman, Decker, Reynolds, Kawasaki : they are seasoned businessmen, experts in their field(s), used to deal with high-level audiences. Hence their certain vision of presentation : a quick/captivating/eye catching story-telling, kind of. How about SlideShare average visitors and users ? Who are they ? My guess : 20-30 yrs old tech geeks. Finding the matching point between them and the jury is the key for success. The winner will be the one who will please * the average * and wow * the experts *. Sounds familiar ? It looks like " American Idol " and the likes to me. A great challenge...
A quick overview of the first applications here, and you'll get the point : for the time being, there is no "wow" stuff. Nothing that turns me on, nothing that make me want to click and watch.
Here is what I would do, should I decide to participate - who knows ?!. By the way, note that this a copy & paste of a comment I left today on Guy Kawasaki' s blog :
Maybe the point is to make the presentation a piece of theatre by itself. A *good* presentation is a story. In this case (Slideshare contest) there is no story-teller, means no speaker/presenter/actor. Hence the basic idea : imagine a presentation where the presenter is inside, 'on' the slides themselves. Then, this presenter will tell a story. A kind of cartoon, if you see what I mean.
Now, the absolute open question to resolve is this one : which topic ? In the introduction, SlideShare claims :
I'm pretty convinced that evangelizing Linux won't make it, nor a recipe for the perfect apple pie : that's too " common stuff ". Maybe evangelizing the perfect apple pie in the greatest city of the world driving a green car will make it though ;-)Your presentation could be about anything you know or care for. From teaching 5th graders history to pitching your ideas to VCs; tell us why your city is great or convince us to buy hybrid cars; evangelize Linux or share a recipe for that perfect apple pie.
