Acknowledgements

My sincere gratitude to Silicon Valley venture capitalists John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures for sharing their unique perspectives on the mission critical importance of presentations, and for sharing their own best presentation practices. I am also grateful to John and Vinod for their continuing support of my coaching services.

Thanks, too, to the Power Presentations program participants who shared their own presentation experiences: Karen Wespi of Maxim Integrated, Peter Santos of Audience, Eric Benhamou of 3Com, Guillaume Estegassy of Microsoft, Steve Ahlbom of Artitudes Design, Noland Granberry of Silicon Image, Xavier Martin of Alcatel Lucent, Karyn Scott of Cisco, and Will Flash of Microsoft.

To the members of the Power Presentations team who support the programs that inspire the concepts and case studies in this book: Nichole Nears, Elenita De Lucca, Pearl Cheung, Rich Hall, Jim Welch, Bill Immerman, and Jon Bromberg.

To the publishing team from Pearson: Jeanne Glasser Levine, Megan Graue, Anne Goebel, and Geneil Breeze; to Warren Drabek from ExpressPermissions; to Jim Levine and Kerry Sparks from the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency; and an extra nod to Nichole Nears for managing the project, permissions, and graphics on our end.

To my blogosphere editors: Fred Allen @ Forbes, Geetesh Bajaj @ indezine.com, and Justin Fox @ Harvard Business Review.

To Robert Totman of NetRoadshow for his counsel on this exciting new form of communication.

For their story suggestions, thanks to Jim Fredricksen of Microsoft for “Winning and Losing the World Cup”; Dave Campbell of Microsoft for “Ready, Fire, Aim!”; Olivier Fontana of Microsoft (again!) also for “Ready, Fire, Aim!”; A. Gino Giglio for Taylor Mali in “Valley Girl Talk”; and Jeff Paine for Anchorperson/Weatherperson in “What do I do with my hands?”

To Norberto Vieyra for his lessons in Argentinian Spanish.

To the steady photographic hand of Jon Bromberg for his theme images.

To the image models, Elenita De Lucca, Master Brendan Lee Seals, and his swimming coach, Joon Young.

And to my lovely Lady Lucie for her love...