Tag Archive for: Slideshare

Harry Markopolos

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Slideshare has the 2005 SEC submission authored by Harry Markopolos. An absolutely fascinating read. Markopolos, a securities analyst, once worked for a competitor of Madoff. He could not figure out mathematically how Madoff was generating such levels of return. And he came to two major conclusions:

Unlikely: insider trading.

Highly likely: Madoff Investment Securities was the world’s largest Ponzi scheme.

His lengthy memo, available at Slideshare, offers a compelling example of the corruption taking place within the financial services industry in the United States. This op-ed piece in the New York Times provides more context.

Where on earth were the regulators during all of this nonsense?

Keynote

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In a few weeks time I will be heading out to Vancouver to give a keynote at a technology forum. The event is sponsored by Microsoft. I had given a keynote for them at a similar event in Toronto last year.

I am prepping up the material now. As some of you know, I am not a fan of death by PowerPoint. I prefer the technique that goes beyond bullet points. If you follow sites like Presentation Zen or look at some — not all — of the top presentations at Slideshare, you can learn a lot about presentation techniques that work effectively when doing keynotes.

I did have a bit of a chuckle though. The organizer contacted me for a headshot, bio and abstract. And he is going to send me a template for my PowerPoint.

Er, no standard template for my PowerPoint. That would be bad. Really, really bad. But to even things out, even though I am a big fan of how Steve Jobs presents his material, I promised them that I wouldn”™t bring Keynote to the keynote.