Why rebuild a presentation that already exists?
The deck has twelve slides, a dense table on slide six and a headline that says “Market”. Nobody in the room will remember slide six tomorrow. What if the table were five bars they could click, and the headline said the thing you want them to believe?
Most presentations say the right things in a way nobody remembers. A rebuild is a chance to sharpen what you want someone to do or believe when they have seen it. And an interactive one gives the audience something to do: drag a slider, click a step, compare two options. What you touch yourself you remember better.
Before and after
Drag the handle. Same numbers, different slide. An invented example for illustration.
Left: a dense table. Right: the same numbers as bars you can click.
How do I get the content out of my PDF or PowerPoint?
Ask the agent to read out the text, pull out the images and render each page, so it can see the layout. Tools like pdftotext and pdfimages do this, and the agent can run them for you. Save PowerPoint as PDF first.
Here is my presentation: [file]. Read out the text page by page, pull out every image and photo into a folder and render each page so you can see the layout. Then list: what each slide is trying to say, which numbers appear and which claims have no support. Change nothing yet.
How do I sharpen the message?
- Make every heading a claim your audience can agree or disagree with. “Market” becomes “A market of 56 million can be reached within five years”.
- One idea per slide. If a slide has two, it is two slides.
- Start with what the audience wants to know, not with you. End with what you want them to do.
- Cut what does not support a claim. What is left is the presentation.
Read BRAND.md. Make a new outline for the presentation: one heading per slide that is a claim, one sentence on what the slide should make the audience understand, and which slide should go. Keep every number exactly as it stands and mark those that lack a source. Who is the audience: [who]. What should they do afterwards: [what]. Show the outline before building anything.
How do I have the agent build it?
As a single HTML file with the images inside, so it can be sent, shown offline and opened on any computer. Arrow keys to move, one key for notes and one for full screen. I did exactly this with a twelve-slide investor presentation from a PDF: the images came out, the claims were sharpened and the efficiency table became bars you can click.
Build the presentation as a single HTML file following the outline. Slide size 1920 by 1080, scaled to the window. Colours and fonts from BRAND.md. Arrow keys move, N shows notes, F is full screen. The images must be inside the file. Text at least 24 pixels. Change no numbers or facts. Show a screenshot of every slide when you are done.
What should be interactive and what should stand still?
- A table with many rows: a chart where you click a row and see the detail.
- A number that depends on an assumption: a slider for the assumption.
- Three options: tabs.
- A plan over time: a timeline you click through.
- A photo or a logo: leave it as it is.
Go through each slide and suggest what gains from being interactive and what should stay still. For each suggestion: what the audience does and what they see. Build only the three with the greatest effect. Label sliders “illustrative” when they show a worked example. Change no numbers.
What do I check before I show it?
- Every number, name and date against the original. An agent can rebuild text wrongly without it showing.
- That estimates are labelled as estimates.
- That every slide works with a keyboard alone, and on a phone if someone will open it there.
- That the contrast between text and background is at least 4.5 to 1 and the text can be read from the back row.
- That it works on another computer and without internet. Fonts fetched from the web should fall back to a common one.
- That nothing private is left in the notes.
To share: send the web file, or put it on a page you control. It can be a couple of megabytes, so think before you email it. Export a PDF with the browser's print, one page per slide, for those who want paper. Use a password or a hidden link for anything not meant to be public.
What becomes possible?
Once you can rebuild one presentation, every old deck is a candidate.
- A pitch deck that doubles as a page you can send ahead of the meeting.
- A workshop deck where the audience picks the path through it.
- A proposal as a presentation the client can open themselves.
Look at the three presentations I use most: [files]. Which would gain the most from being rebuilt as an interactive page, and why? For the best one, sketch what it would become: the claim on each slide, the one thing the audience can touch, and what I would remove.
Questions people ask
Do I lose something when I leave PowerPoint?
Yes, a few things: editing in PowerPoint, and how well some companies accept the file type. Keep the original and export a PDF if the recipient needs it.
How long does a rebuild take?
Plan for one to three hours for ten to fifteen slides, mostly spent reviewing and correcting.
Sources
Who is writing this
I am Nathaniel, a commercial operator. For twenty years, across four continents and more than fifteen ventures, I have taken research and young companies from idea to customer. Two KTH spin-offs reached joint development agreements with Fortune 500 partners. An indoor farm sold its full production within about ninety days and ended in a joint venture exit. This year I am a commercial expert for the European Innovation Council's Tech to Market programme. Now I build agents, because the hard part of new technology is rarely the technology. It is getting people to want it and use it.
Want to do this together?
In two hours I can build this with you: Interactive presentations.