Today I want to draw your attention to one of my favourite business-related blog posts of all-time. It’s nearly three years old, but it’ll still ring true in thirty-three years’ time. And it’s to do with making slide-show (e.g Powerpoint) presentations.

In The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint on How to Change the World, Guy Kawasaki draws on his experience of being “presented-at” for years. As an editor who’s sat through far too many interminably long press conferences, I can thoroughly sympathise with him. And here’s what he suggests: 10 slides, 20 minutes, and no font under 30 points. It’s a great guideline, and if you think it can’t be done, read his reasoning why it should be.

I’m doing a slideshow presentation about the time many of you will be reading this. I’ll try to follow the rules.

Guy Kawasaki on How To Change The World is usually worth listening to, and last week on the AmEx OPEN forum he posted a nice piece called The Art of Customer Surveys. Now, we all know we have to listen to our customers (and equally importantly, potential customers), and we all know surveys are a good way of sounding them out, especially as they’re so easy to do. But Kawasaki points out there are many dangers in surveys, not least their self-selecting nature. I don’t think these are reasons to avoid doing surveys, but you might want to bear them in mind when assessing results.