Presentation design for technology companies

The recurring problem in technology decks is that the person presenting understands the thing too well. Expertise compresses: what took years to learn becomes one dense slide, and the audience is asked to decompress it in real time. The IBM Quantum Summit keynote is the clearest case, quantum computing for a room that was half engineers and half executives.

The fix is not simplification, which technical audiences correctly resent. It is sequencing. One idea per slide, revealed in the order the explanation actually follows, so the diagram builds as the speaker talks rather than sitting there complete while everyone reads ahead.

Enterprise technology adds a second problem: the buying committee. A deck that persuades the engineer rarely persuades the CFO who signs, and the version that persuades the CFO usually loses the engineer. Both have to be in the same deck without either feeling written for someone else.