Seattle Mayor Ed Murray addressed the Seattle Metro Chamber of Commerce’s 134th annual meeting on Friday, and touched on a variety of matters of importance facing the city and his office. He did so in a way that wouldn’t normally wow his tech-savvy constituency — except that it was a first for Murray.
“I’m going to do something that I haven’t had the chance to do as an elected official, because usually I sit in hearings or meetings,” Murray said. “So this is my first PowerPoint as an adult. It’s my first PowerPoint ever!”
First rule of PowerPoint is probably to not overshadow your PowerPoint with a no-PowerPoint-skills admission. But Murray’s command of the Microsoft program appeared to defy his lack of history using it.
The mayor opened his presentation with a slide showing a fake Seattle Times front page with a large headline reporting “Plane lands safely.” His point was to illustrate that such an event happens every day with relative ease, but in actuality it happens because of a series of complicated processes and constant innovation.
“It happens because people work very very hard,” Murray said. “It happens because people look at best practices, they look at data, they look at performance and they make adjustments in real time. And that is exactly what your city government has been doing.”
Whether that performance evaluation will translate to any necessary adjustments with future Murray PowerPoints remains to be seen.
In the meantime, the mayor at least caught the attention of Seattle tech executive and angel investor Heather Redman, who is the incoming vice chair at the Seattle Chamber.
“I was really excited to see the mayor do a PowerPoint,” Redman said. “I’m sure Microsoft was cheering that!”
