At OpenWorld 2010 Oracle CEO Larry Ellison proves that his friend Steve Jobs has apparently never given him presentation pointers. There is never an excuse for this kind of nonvisual, especially in a keynote talk in front of thousands of people. You do not see it in this video below, but in the live version instead of a remote control, the legendary CEO simply said "Next Slide!" every few minutes. What year is it? Anyway, how would he have been better (it was not just the slides that were the problem)? Mr. Ellison would have been better off just pulling up a stool close to the front of the audience and doing a shorter talk that highlighted some of his key points in an *engaging* way. He could have used the confidence monitors off stage for notes, but there is no reason to show the audiences his notes (and that's all the slides were: his notes). Larry Ellison's presentation style is not unusual. In fact, this is very normal and typical still in 2010.

Above, slides like this are no way to connect and engage with an audience. Much better to use no visuals than dreaded slides like these. Imagine if Darth Vader tried to make his case to Luke using PowerPoint in the style? It would not have worked any better than trying to use violence as he did. Although, maybe with enough slides like this even the noble Luke Skywalker would have given in to the dark side just to make the death by slidemare end. In this way, even a lifesaber is no match for a deck of wordy PowerPoint slides for inflicting heavy damage on a group of people.

Above: What if Lord Vader used the dark side of PowerPoint to make his case?

Related Star Wars analogy

Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle: OpenWorld 2010 (highlights)

ZDNet on the keynote: "I can’t recall a major industry conference first day keynote where within 10 minutes I was getting bored and within 30 I was out the door - at least of the main hall."

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