The ever-excellent Slideshare is running its annual World's Best Presentation contest. Browsing through, there are some really nice decks with interesting content. You can easily see the influence Presentation Zen and Duarte Design have had (all for the better) in the war against death by PowerPoint. I particularly like the following:
But...
The thing that strikes me looking through most of the entries is that the presenter is almost entirely superfluous. Surely presentations, at their best, are about presenters making a connection with an audience – not simply a set of slides that can be read through (however pretty they are).
So while the competition may showcase some of the world's best slide decks, for the best presentations you'll still have to look to TED.