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One of the finest live presentations I have ever witnessed featured a man and a microphone. It was in 1989, the debut event of the annual Ventura Summit, and John Meyer, the president of Ventura Software was the keynote speaker. He did not speak from a script, yet it was obvious that he knew what he wanted to say. He began at a podium, but frequently moved to the edge of the stage where nothing separated him from his audience. He was always looking into someone's eyes, and regularly journeyed from one side of the room to another.
He spoke of the company's beginnings, but resisted all temptations to proper the dreadful "corporate background" speech. He shared with us through anecdotes how customers had influenced the product, but did not give in to the air-puffed "we are responsive to your needs" cliches. And he shared with us his goals for the software, but never once used words like "proactive," "vision," "innovative," or any other buzzword that sounds good but means nothing at all. The crowd of 300 was utterly riveted. They watched his every move, and hung on his every word. All the focus was on John, as the lights were up and there were no multimedia distractions behind him (of course, that word hadn't even been invented yet). |
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