What is this thing? Why am I Here?

Once in a while, an inflection point appears in a well established practice. Those who see a new, better way to do something don't just move away from the desultory pack, they accelerate away. Presentation techniques have reached just such an inflection point.

Books like Presentation Zen and Slideology describe a new approach to using tools that have been around for decades, like PowerPoint and Keynote. Both are wonderful books.

But the three of us are software geeks. Reading about a new philosophy of presentations is one thing, but we like concrete instructions. In the architect and software ecospheres, the concept of a pattern exists as a kind of nomenclature. A pattern describes a set of related concepts in a standard format with a name. For example, in the software world, you can say "I need an object which can only be instantiated once, and all subsequent attempts to create a new one returns the lone instance" or you can say "I need a Singleton". The Singleton design pattern is defined in the book Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-oriented Design, which provides a well known, concise way to refer to a common technique.

The working title is Presentations Patterns and Anti-patterns. This book provides more than 50 (and counting) patterns and anti-patterns for creating extremely effective and engaging presentations.