Today we’d like to introduce you to Rick Altman.
Rick, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I wasn’t good enough to play professional tennis, so I went to work for a tennis magazine. Then desktop publishing got invented, and it was a mind-blowing experience for me. I dove headlong into the age of digital graphics in the early 1990s, holding learning events and industry conferences for early adopters of graphic and publishing software. (This was before Adobe dominated that sector.) I would journey down to San Diego to hold seminars and our annual conference whenever I could. The DoubleTree Mission Valley was a particularly good fit for us. We debuted the Presentation Summit in 2003, and brought it to San Diego in ’04, ’05, ’06, ’08, ’10, ’14, and we will be there in ’18.
My love for the city runs long and deep, as we started vacationing at Mission Beach when I was six years old (back when Belmont Park was a full amusement park, extending all the way to San Fernando Place. We returned to South Mission summer after summer, and I can stroll Ocean Front Walk today and pick out the homes we rented, even though they are completely transformed now. Oh, if only my father had bought one of them back in the mid 1960s… doh!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I could bore your readers with our trials and tribulations, but they would be first-world problems and I would deserve their sarcasm. I have nothing but gratitude for the opportunity to create community among presentation professionals and PowerPoint users. I have the opportunity to make people’s lives just a little bit better and that is a privilege I will never take for granted. As for our conference, when you only hold one event per year, it is always fresh, it never becomes tedious or routine, and I look upon it as the best four days of my business life.
Please tell us about BetterPresenting.com.
I teach presentation skills, and that has been a great gig. I cover the four tenets of the presentation experience:
– Message crafting
– Presentation design
– PowerPoint technique
– Delivery
And there is good job security in what I do, because not too many people have storytelling instincts, most of us do not have a background in design, few people are sufficiently trained with the software, and everyone is scared to death to speak in public. No wonder the deck is stacked against those who need to communicate effectively and no wonder “Death by PowerPoint” is in just about everyone’s lexicon.
Fifty weeks out of the year, I go into companies; one week out of the year, I make them come to me. That’s the afore-mentioned Presentation Summit, and more often than not, I make them come to San Diego. Come mid-October, when it’s snowing in Pittsburgh, and it’s mid-70s around Mission Bay, man, is that a great feeling to be able to bring four days of enlightenment to folks AND show them a wonderful time.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Mission Beach. The roller coaster at Belmont Park. Spending two weeks at those homes right on Ocean Front Walk.
Pricing:
- Attending the Presentation Summit costs $1,495 for the four-day event. It will be held Sep 23-26 next year.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.BetterPresenting.com
- Phone: 925.398.6210
- Email: ricka@altman.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThePresentationSummit/
- Twitter: @rickaltman
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