Microsoft CES keynote – review from public speaking perspective

The first thing of the year (in tech industry) is CES – Consumer Electronic Show in Los Vagas.

We used to have Macworld expo happening the same time of the year. But, since Apple’s departure from all trade show in 2009, Macworld expo 2010 is scheduled in Feb 12. Without Macworld, I can finally shift my focus to CES keynote. :)

Honestly, this is my first time watching Steve Ballmer on the stage live (through internet webcast). He’s been famous for his public speaking style – developers, developers, developers. The CES one is a lot milder. After all, it’s a CES trade show – not his own party.

I do feel there are a lot of problems in Microsoft’s keynote. Both Steve Ballmer and Robbie Bach have committed some obvious problems. Here’s where the problems are:

  1. It seems like Steve is shouting all the time. Or, well, speaking too loud. That hurts my ear drums.
  2. Slides are too “pretty”. Too much graphical noise, I think.

    Should I look at the image or the text? The image’s choice is not good too. I don’t really feel too much association between the image subject and the text.
  3. Too much sales pitch and lecturing. They just keep saying how versatile the PC ecosystem is, how great Windows 7 is, how innovated Zune is, blah blah blah… Show me some quotes from blogs and reviews. Show me evidence!
  4. Make figure meaningful.

    Fastest selling OS in history?? Show me how “fastest” it is!


    300 million PCs? 3% increase? How important is it? I think a qualitative comparison in graphical format is more helpful than just this statement.

  5. Too much stuff is presented – xbox, zune, windows 7, bing!, windows phone, PC hardware, Slate PC… what’s important? where’s the focus?
  6. Demos are too rough. I think demo is very important. They didn’t set up people’s anticipation to the demo during the presentation. They just dump a bunch of slides and then demo. The demos do not show enough enforcement to the slides they presented.

Generally, I don’t like this presentation at all. Even if they are inventing great technologies, the way they present them… make them sound dump and boring. I hate the slides too. I just don’t like having graphics and text in almost every single slide (check out the live blog entry in Engadget). This is just noisy to me.

Demos are rough and not focused. If you wanna show me cool stuff, do it slowly and tell me it’s important. The way they demo reminds me how people use windows. It’s chaotic!

This Steve is just way way way behind my Steve. You know what… if you want users think that Microsoft products are cool, do some great presentations! This one… it is exactly the PC guy in commercial.

You can watch the keynote here

(All photos are courtesy of Engadget)