Apple’s Steve Jobs gets a lot of attention for his presentations, as he should. He’s a masterful showman and he understands far better than most how to grab and hold the audience’s attention through a spare visual style, focused writing and deliberate pacing, full of dramatic vocal pauses.
Microsoft executives, on the other hand, are generally mocked for their visually overproduced presentation slides and artless speaking style. So when I stumbled across this video of Steve Balmer opening a Microsoft gathering, my first instinct was to laugh at how ridiculous Balmer was, especially as I had just finished watching the ever cool Jobs.
The point of the presentation was to fire up the troops at Microsoft. If the purpose of a presentation opening is to get the attention of the audience and set the tone for the presentation to follow, then didn’t Balmer do just that? We can still laugh at Balmer, just on principle, and I can’t say I’d ever open a presentation like that, but you have to give him credit for getting the job done.
Not bad for a multi-billionaire.
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