top of page
OUR BLOG
Read It All
Storytelling
There Is a Story in Every Business Deck. Here Is How to Find It.
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
3 min read
Words Can Save Your Life — But Only If You Know How to Use Them
Introduction: The Most Powerful Tool You Already Have Simon Lancaster opened his keynote with a parachute. Four passengers, three chutes, one plane going down — and the person who jumps to their death is the one who used his words worst. It is a brilliant, disarming way to make a point that runs through everything Simon does: communication is not a soft skill. It is the skill. The Question Nobody in AI Thought to Ask When ChatGPT launched, it changed everything. But Simon not
3 min read
11 Things That Will Take Your Technical Presentation to the Next Level
Introduction: Start with a Hook, Not a Title Luca Bruschi opened his session by quoting a Harvard research team — spanning MIT, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and "our proud sponsors, the Google" — who spent four years studying whether a picture is really worth a thousand words. Their conclusion? Some pictures are worth 500 billion words. It was completely made up. And it worked perfectly. The point: your opening does not have to announce the topic. It has to earn attention. On
3 min read
Panel Discussion: The Business Impact of Effective Presentations with Bosch, KBC & Ampeco
Introduction: Meet the Panelists The Panelists: Mario Pankov – Private Banking Sales Support Officer, KBC Asset Management Maryan Rizinski – Manager of Technology Consulting, Bosch Baycho Georgiev – Chief Marketing Officer, Ampeco Moderated by Stefani Tsolova – Software Engineering Manager, Progress Stefani: Baycho, AMPECO has attracted some serious investors — BMW i Ventures, LaunchHub. How much of that came down to how you presented the vision? Baycho Georgiev: The short an
3 min read
Read It All
Design
Human vs. AI: A Five-Round Presentation Battle
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
3 min read
You Are Not Getting Jarvis. Here Is How to Work With AI
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
3 min read
4 Confessions From a Designer Who Learned AI the Hard Way
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
3 min read
One Size Fits None: How to Tailor Any Presentation to Any Audience
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
3 min read
Read It All
Public Speaking
AI Can Tell Your Story. Here Is Why You Should Still Show Up
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
3 min read
Speak From the Core: The AI Speaker Framework That Scales Who You Are
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
3 min read
How to Give Technical Demos That People Actually Remember
Introduction: The One Rule That Changes Everything The moment you look at your screen, you give the audience permission to look at theirs. That single insight is the foundation of everything Brent Ozar teaches about demos — and it is the reason most technical presentations lose their audience before they have even started. Brent makes his living doing demos all over the world. This session is his playbook. Table Stakes: The Bare Minimum for 2024 Before any of the creative stu
3 min read
Your Body Language Is Showing — Here's How to Use It Right
Introduction: Three Entrances, Three Completely Different People Ida Holten walked onto the stage three times at the start of her session. Same person, same words — and yet the audience reacted differently every single time. The first entrance was high-energy and bold. The second was apologetic, almost reluctant. The third was warm, grounded, and genuinely present. The words were nearly identical. The nonverbals were entirely different. That gap between what you say and how y
4 min read
Read It All
Tools
Copilot in PowerPoint: What It Does Today, What's Coming, and Why It's Only Getting Better
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.
3 min read
Epic Fails With AI — And What They Actually Teach You
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
3 min read
Stop Asking ChatGPT the Wrong Questions — Here Is How to Actually Use It for Presentations
Introduction: The Gap Between Using AI and Using It Well Only 21% of people give ChatGPT any feedback after they get their first response. The other 79% either ship the first draft straight away or give up entirely. That gap — between people who use AI and people who use it well — is exactly what Ryan J. Warriner came to Present to Succeed to close. His solution is the PATH framework: a four-part formula for giving ChatGPT precisely what it needs to build a presentation that
3 min read
PowerPoint Just Got a Copilot — Here's What That Actually Means
Introduction: A Revolution That's Already Started Nearly every hand in the room went up when Alex Selig asked how many people use PowerPoint. Far fewer stayed up when he asked who had used Copilot in the last three months. That gap — between the tool everyone uses and the AI sitting inside it — is exactly what this session is about. Microsoft's vision is simple to state and ambitious to deliver: you take the first step, Copilot takes the next three. From Layout Tool to Pres
3 min read
bottom of page