Here’s some SlideShare news that I’d like to share with readers of this blog.

Guy Kawasaki’s firm, Garage Ventures and SlideShare have co-sponsored the “World’s Best Presentation Contest”. The contest went live yesterday and it will continue for a month. The contest’s four judges are literally a who’s who from the world of presentations and communication. Guy Kawasaki needs no introduction, but what you might not know about him is that, he is a thought leader on how to make effective presentations with his 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint. He blogged about the contest here. Garr Reynolds is the author of Presentation Zen and a hugely inspiring figure on the presentation scene. Bert Decker is a very well respected communications expert and is known best for his commentaries on US Presidential debates on television. Jerry Weissman is one of the world’s top presentation coaches and works with many high profile CEOs and companies.

Users will vote on the contest entries and the top entries will be judged by the panel for the Best Presentation Awards. There is also the People’s Choice awards for the entries receiving the most user votes. The prizes for the Best Presentation Award (1st prize- An Alienware Laptop with Windows Vista; 2nd prize- An XBox 360 w/ games; 3rd prize- An Xbox 360) are sponsored by Microsoft. The People’s Awards prizes (1st prize- A Video Ipod (30GB); 2nd prize- An Ipod Nano (2 GB); 3rd prize- An Ipod Shuffle 1 GB) are sponsored by SlideShare. If you have a killer slide deck, do enter it into the contest (in fact, you can enter upto five) and get it reviewed by these presentation topguns.You can learn more about the contest rules here.

The idea behind the contest is to shine a spotlight on well-designed presentations and to highlight the creative and effective use of PowerPoint. Powerpoints are often blamed for brain dead presentations, but the software is hardly to blame. As Guy Kawasaki says in the press release – “A craftsman doesn’t blame his tools. We expect this contest to show exactly what PowerPoint ‘artists’ can be do with clear thinking, concise text, and cool graphics.”

And here’s some insider news. While we always had a SlideShare contest in the back of our minds, the idea for this one was thought of by Guy Kawasaki himself. He has been involved in the working out of the basic concept and its modalities. Its been a very learning experience for us all along the way.

p.s. – YouTube also launched their 2006 Most Popular Videos Awards yesterday. It was sheer coincidence that the day they chose was the same as ours.