Improvements to the world must be highly contextualized

I saw a wonderful video (TED talks) presented by Dr Hans Rosling. Dr Rosling is well known for his unique approach to data visualization. I highly recommend this video.
While it certainly is educational in its core area of poverty, what was truly inspiring to me was how it made me question my assumptions.

At one point in the video Dr Rosling says the challenge he was facing with his students was not "ignorance" but rather "prejudice". This truth applies irrespective of what you do in your life.

Watch this video, it is worth your time :-)

How much effort do you put into your presentations

In the enterprise software context/world we don't have a presentation guru. Presentations are considered as part of the job responsibility of most of the normal functional roles. It is more common to see presentations be a part of the day to day job for functional managers (program, product, project) and for sales and marketing folks than for developers and other engineers.

Most presentations follow a common company template or stay simple. This is not a bad thing but if the goal is to influence people through the presentation that the medium and the tools being used might be as important if not more as the content being presented.

Data Visualizations: Modern Approaches is an aggregation of different presentation techniques. Specifically addressing the problem of data visualization. Good link to have in your book marks list.
(HT to Guy Kawasaki )

Links:
Data Visualizations: Modern Approaches
presentation zen.