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Top 10 Best Presentations Ever
Aug 21Hi. Welcome to KnowHR. Many of you come here every day to read this post about the best presentations. If you like it and would be interested in practical, straightforward advice about HR and communicating, would you consider subscribing? You can sign up to get KnowHR by email or in your RSS reader. Thanks a lot for stopping by!
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Sarah and I were talking about great presentations we’d seen or heard about and she came up with an idea for a Top 10 list. Here’s our take on the Top 10 Best Presentations Ever (in no particular order…and if you have others to add, we’d love to hear about them):
Steve Jobs introduces the Macintosh in 1984. Back then, Steve dressed like Tucker Carlson circa 2006, but black tee shirts and jeans or double-breasted jacket and bow tie, this Macintosh unveiling rocked the house. Steve has perfected the sense of theater, and none is better than this one. Check out how he pulls the 3.5-inch floppy from his jacket pocket. Flair, baby.
Dick Hardt’s Identity 2.0 presentation at OSCON 2005. Hardt’s preparation and energy sets the standard for presentation quality. He uses hundreds of slides in this 20-minute, high buzz work. Heck, I didn’t even care about virtual identity and still watched this one five or six times. It has a chance of becoming my presentation Dirty Dancing (which I’ve seen 100 times), where “nobody puts baby in the corner.”
Guy Kawasaki’s Art of the Start speech at TiECon 2006. In the 40-minute presentation (PDF of slides here), Kawasaki talks about innovation and business evangelism. When he talks about “Make Mantra” it’s well worth listening to. The beauty of his speech is that he uses a Top 10 approach and is unafraid to speak plainly and with great humor (which is sadly lost in public speaking).
Dr. Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech in 1963. Who can argue that Dr. King’s speech in Washington on August 28, 1963 was anything but brilliant and changed the trajectory of America? But the rheotrical beauty of this speech is also unparalleled. At a time when our language has been reduced to the common, it’s essential to look upon the preparation and thought that Dr. King used for this monumetal speech.
Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture talk at the 2002 Open Source Conference. The master of the simple slides shows us how it’s done. And since, as he says, this is his 100th time for this talk, he has this bad boy down solid. Even though this talk is from 2002, his slide presentation style is still as fresh today as Axe Body Spray.
Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink presentation at SXSW 2005. I’ve seen Gladwell talk a couple of times in person, and he’s brilliant. He talks fast and he makes points by telling stories. He doesn’t lecture, he paints a picture. All this from one of the foremost thinkers of our age. Gladwell makes the points, “We can do more with less. And there are real dangers in giving people too much information.” Hey, that reminds me, Where are his slides? Oh, he’s presenting without slides. How about that?
Tom Peters presents A Ham Sandwich in 1990. Okay, this isn’t a Peters presentation, but the guy has so much passion that he can make a ham sandwich sound compelling. I saw him a few times in the late 80s during the height of the Thriving on Chaos days, and that was some rallying cry. In the link here, Peters outlines what makes a great presentation. No one can leave a Tom Peters presentation saying they weren’t energized and entertained.
Seth Godin talks about Marketing at Google in 2006. “Technology doesn’t win, but it sure gives you a chance at marketing.” Godin knows the story, lived it, and tells it. He also uses slides to his advantage to persuade his audience that he’s right. Check out the slide he calls “No one cares about you.” Is there anything wrong with getting people to laugh and think at the same time?
Andy Kaufman sings along to Mighty Mouse on SNL in 1975. Mies van der Rohe would have been proud, because Kaufman showed the essence of “less is more” in this Saturday Night Live skit. I’m not suggesting that your presentations should be filled renditions of superhero songs, but negative space is important, and this presentation was both ahead of its time and pointed in its simplicity.
Rupert Everett sings I Say a Little Prayer for You in MBFW in 1997. Okay, this is just one of our favorites and isn’t exactly a “presentation.” In fact, it’s from a movie – My Best Friend’s Wedding. But isn’t a lot of what we do a “presentation” designed to persuade people to believe our story? The beauty of this one is the lead-in and then the music. Oh, the power of music. And if you haven’t seen this movie, the last scene is just fantastic.
UPDATE: The readers have spoken! And in addition to KnowHR’s Top 10 Best Presentations Ever, we now have Top 10 Best Presentations – The Reader’s Choice. Click on over and have a look at 10 more great presentations.
About the Author
Frank Roche
Frank started IFRACTAL over 7 years ago with Sarah Chambers. Together, they've created HR communications and HR software for some of the world's leading companies. Frank is also studying Flamenco guitar and origami.
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Hmmm. Are you looking for presentations that really changed things?
Here are some other candidates:
1. FDR’s 1941 State of the Union, in which he discussed the U.S.’s commitment to the Four Freedoms, later enshrined by Norman Rockwell.
2. JFK’s first inaugural, in which he laid down a gauntlet to Americans, who then picked it up.
3. Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. Perfect for the time and place — he followed a 2-hour address from the greatest orator of the time, Edward Everett. Everyone expected something else similar. He was up and down in under two minutes. The photographer didn’t have a chance to focus. The crowd was stunned to silence, the speech got only scattered applause.
Everett realized what had happened, but he was probably the only one. He wrote Lincoln that Lincoln had done in two minutes what he had hoped to do in two hours — but Lincoln did it better. Garry Wills and others have said that Lincoln’s address put the Declaration of Independence in a proper spotlight in U.S. history, and therefore, in the history of freedom in the world.
Two minutes, no slides, no amplification.
4. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “Ohio.” They intended it as a protest to the shootings of students by the National Guard at Kent State University in Ohio, in 1970. It played everywhere in that summer. By the fall, all protesters, claiming outwardly to be committed to protest, instead absorbed the hidden text message: “Four dead in Ohio.” Students stopped protesting and instead got degrees and moved into government. Protest was deadly, was the message. By 1975, when the South Vietnamese government teetered on the brink, even U.S. Congressmen got the message, and the war ended when the U.S. refused to support a corrupt government. It happened again in the Philippines years later.
Hmmm. Great topic.
Brilliant, just brilliant!
It’s a great article – if you watch them bright-eyed you can save a lot of money for your communication coach
My favorites are Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin – don’t miss to watch their presentations…
Jep, i like them them the most as well.
Great speakers and amazingly inspirating
really cool post, just bookmarked!
Hey,
You should watch out for browser compatibility for your blog. It looks so ugly in IE7.
I think Seth Godin at TED was much better than his marketing presentation. In fact, the TED presentations almost universally would make the top 25 of best presentations online.
Ronald Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev tear down this Wall” speech should be #1. He was, after all, the Great Communicator. And the Wall did come down, along with the Soviet (Evil Empire) Union and the end of the Cold War. I have been to the Wall and his words still echo there….
Nice share
I think Seth Godin at TED was much better than his marketing presentation. In fact, the TED presentations almost universally would make the top 25 of best presentations online.
You're right. This list was compiled over 2 years ago. I should make a new one.
Lincoln's gettysburg has to be the best address. wasnt there a picture in time magazine a while a go about the address… someone claimed it that it was Lincoln standing by the stage.. is this it? http://www.american-architecture.info/USA/USA-N...
Thanks for the awesome list of resources to help me blog better.
Randy Pausch's speech about childhood dreams at Carnegie Mellon was amazing
Awesome just Awesome
Broken Link
Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture talk at the 2002 Open Source Conference.
New link
http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/free.html
@Sohil Thanks very much for letting me know…and for the new link. That’s really great of you. — Frank
Malcolm Gladwell one of the foremost thinkers of our age!? WTF…