PowerPoint Live 2009, Oct 11-14: The Conference Team

Rick Altman has been hosting end-user conferences since 1989. He is the author of 15 books on presentations and graphics, including Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck...and how you can make them better.

Cliff Atkinson is an acclaimed writer, popular keynote speaker, and an independent consultant to leading attorneys and Fortune 500 companies. He designed the presentations that helped persuade a jury to award a $253 million verdict to the plaintiff in the nation's first Vioxx trial in 2005. The editors of Amazon.com selected Cliff’s book Beyond Bullet Points as a “Best Book of 2007.”

Ric Bretschneider joined the Microsoft PowerPoint team over sixteen years ago. As a Senior Program Manager, he designs features and manages their development for the next version. Ric can also be heard on his Presentations Roundtable podcast, promoting excellence in design and technique through interviews of industry professionals.

Geetesh Bajaj (center of photo) is involved with print, presentation, and web media and has been a Most Valued Professional (MVP) for PowerPoint since 2001, Geetesh creates presentations and templates professionally and also manages the indezine.com and powerpointed.com Web sites.

Bill Dilworth works for an advanced medical imaging company as the Clinical Applications Manager in charge of training. His involvement with PowerPoint has him pulling in elements of imaging, theater, design, programming, and a knack for problem-solving. He has written several add-ins to help increase the workflow and decrease the time required to perform repetitive tasks.

Peggy Duncan is a personal productivity expert who trains internationally on organization, time management, email management, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and do-it-yourself search engine optimization. She's written several books on all of her training topics and has received boatloads of national publicity due to shameless self-promotion.

As a Multimedia Presentation Specialist with over 20 years of experience in live event production, Todd Dunn has earned a reputation for making clients look and sound great. He is a PowerPoint MVP and the chair of InfoComm's Presentations Council. To us, he's nothing less than the go-to guy for anything related to hardware or something funky that isn't behaving properly (or something funky that is, like his sax).

Jim Endicott is the founder and creative force behind Distinction Communication, a specialist in message perfection for clients with an important presentation to deliver next month, next week, or the next morning.

A refugee from corporate marketing, Rikk Flohr founded his design firm, Fleeting Glimpse Images, in January of 2006. After receiving his degree in computer science in the early 80s, Rikk turned to photography as a passion and has been shooting professionally since 1983. His work has been featured in several media and has won numerous awards.

Glen Millar has designed and delivered hundreds of presentations to audiences both in Australia and internationally on subjects as diverse as scientific research, environmental sustainability, and effective presenting. He works in one of Australia’s largest regional governments supervising a team of communication and education professionals responsible for environmental communication and community engagement projects.

Dave Paradi teaches professionals and executives from Fortune 500 corporations to non-profit agencies how to transform overloaded text slides into persuasive visuals. He is the author of "The Visual Slide Revolution," named one of the Top 10 Business Books of 2008.

Steve Rindsberg, MVP since 1996, has assisted PowerPoint users online for ten years
and counting. He has conducted numerous seminars and written magazine articles and books on PowerPoint. In a former life, he ran a slide service bureau and learned far more about printing and output than is healthy. He is the author of many PowerPoint add-ins and maintains the popular PPT FAQ website. He swears he talked Rick into hosting PPTLive in the first place. [editor's note: he did]

Lesa Snider is on a mission to teach the world to create and use better graphics. She’s a stock photographer and chief evangelist for iStockphoto and founder of the creative tutorial site GraphicReporter.com. Lesa is the author of "Photoshop: The Missing Manual" and writes She writes regularly for Macworld Magazine, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, Elements Techniques, and Layers Magazine.

Echo Swinford began making slides as a medical meeting planner in 1997 and just never stopped. She uses PowerPoint as the basis for webcasts, CDs, and online applications. Her web site is graced by dozens of downloadables and helpful documents, and she has been a member of the MVP team since 2000.

Dr. Carmen Taran has helped companies revolutionize the way they communicate and relate to their employees and clients. A co-founder at Rexi Media, Carmen’s focus is on communication design, applied in face-to-face, virtual, or on-demand settings. A published author, she has kept audiences alert and entertained in the United States, Canada, Taiwan, China, and Japan.

Julie Terberg specializes in designing for the presentation medium. As the owner of Terberg Design, she works with clients in a wide range of industries, developing unique and effective presentation solutions. Julie is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP and she enjoys sharing knowledge with other designers via custom workshops, web-based training, and live conference sessions.

Alvin Trusty is the director of educational technology at The University of Findlay. His academic interests include copyright and personal learning networks. Alvin teaches educators of all grade levels how to create visually-rich presentations without breaking the bank or violating copyright law.

Bob van Duuren is our IT Geek in Residence, and to show you how much we value his expertise, we fly him all the way here from Holland. As this photo correctly implies, he does make it all look rather easy.