Introduction: The Final Showdown To close out Present to Succeed, Lyndon Nicholson and Bec Fried from Future Present took a different approach to the conference wrap-up. Instead of a summary, they staged a battle. One client brief — a new luxury coffee brand called Roast Club — two approaches, five rounds, and the audience voting after each one. Bec was the human brain: instinct, skill, pen and paper. Lyndon was the AI robot: fast, data-driven, and repeatedly let down by his

Introduction: The Second Great Disruption For millions of years, the only way to transmit information was through storytelling. In Marrakesh's Djemaa el-Fna square, the tradition still lives: a storyteller called Mahmoud holds crowds with nothing but his voice. In the business world, we call those people presenters — and they tend to do it in a considerably less fascinating way. Two seismic shifts have changed the landscape. First, algorithms took over distribution — Facebook

Introduction: Nobody Wants Your AI Talk Alex Steffen opened with sweat on his face and pudding for legs — about to present to 40 senior managers, with the founder of the company (one of the 100 richest people in his country) sitting in the front row. Instead of delivering persuasive arguments, he took the room on a helicopter ride over the Peruvian Amazon. By the time he made his point — "Great teams are built through trust" — the audience had already felt it. That is the dif

Introduction: 20 Hours of Travel, Zero Filters Jay Welshofer flew 20 hours to Sofia. He used to carry a military-grade computer on his back to give PowerPoint presentations. He once walked off a stage in front of 14,000 people, broke his nose, and jumped back up covered in blood. After 26 years at Apple and one at Microsoft, he is not here to give you a polished corporate pitch. He is here to show you what Copilot in PowerPoint can actually do — and to answer your questions.

Introduction: The Donkey From Shrek Yuliia Chumak started using AI expecting Jarvis — smart, loyal, always one step ahead. What she got was the donkey from Shrek: talks a lot, tries hard, occasionally gets things right, and mostly needs to be dragged in the right direction. That gap between expectation and reality, she argues, is exactly where most people go wrong with AI in design. The fix is not better tools. It is a better approach. Think Like Tony Stark To get your donkey

Introduction: What Makes a Presentation Stick? Frauke Havinga opened with a simple question: think of a presentation that truly stayed with you. Chances are it was not the venue or the slide design. It was that the presentation felt relatable — it spoke to your world, your experience, your life. That is the goal Frauke and her team at Mr.Prezident chase with every project, and increasingly, AI is how they get there. The Problem With Most Business Decks Most presentations live

Introduction: Two Years, Four Lessons Two years ago at Present to Succeed, the conversation about AI was just beginning. Now, as Katya Kovalenko puts it, it is everywhere — and so are the mistakes. Rather than showing polished AI success stories, Katya came back with four honest confessions from her own workflow: things she got wrong, things she changed, and what she now does differently. Confession 1: Good AI Takes Real Work Katya took on a poster project using AI-generated

Introduction: The Juggling Act Piotr Garlej walked on stage with five juggling balls and a plan. The plan failed immediately — and that, he explained, made it the perfect intro to his topic. Most speakers show you AI at its polished best. Piotr wanted to show you what happens when it goes wrong, because understanding why it fails is where the real value lies. Lesson 1: Challenge AI — Never Trust the First Answer ChatGPT gave Piotr a regional Polish dialect word with complete

Introduction: Great Slides Are Not Enough After more than 6,000 presentations at Fu Deck Studios, Ada Mazurek has seen a pattern repeat itself far too often: founders and executives walking into rooms with genuinely great ideas and well-designed slides — and walking out empty-handed. Not because the product was wrong. Because the presentation was built for the wrong person. Her message is simple, and she repeats it throughout the keynote: one size fits none. Start With the Ri

Introduction: The Talk That Never Went Viral Damon Nofar opened with a hypothetical: imagine someone used AI to generate an entire TED Talk — script, slides, everything — and it went viral. Did you see it? No. Because it never happened. AI can produce a presentation. It cannot make an audience care. That is still entirely a human job. Idea #1: Be More Human The biggest mistake companies make with AI messaging? They let it write in AI language instead of human language. Gene