Eric started his communications career as a government public affairs officer in June, 1982, and wrote his first speech for a senior government executive less than a year later. “It was a retirement speech, so it was fairly low risk,” he says. “But I worked almost five hours to craft that five minutes. I received a lovely note from the speaker, which I still have.” He left government in September, 1985, and set out on his own as a freelance communications consultant. For the first ten years of his freelance career, he wrote hundreds of speeches for executives in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors, earning local, national and international awards for his work. As PowerPoint began taking the world by storm in the early 1990s, he noticed that when the speeches he had written were accompanied by slides, they were more difficult to listen to and absorb than those without slides. In 1992, after he saw a demonstration that separated the written word from the spoken word, and the ensuing gain in communication effectiveness that resulted, he hasn’t looked at presentations the same way since. For more than a quarter century, people have asked why he doesn’t like slides. “In truth, I'm ambivalent toward slides, but I believe in effective communication,” he says. “Slides are not the presentation. The presenter is. I am an advocate of presentations that can be so much more interesting, engaging and effective when slides support the speaker, not the other way around.” Eric holds a bachelor of arts in communication studies and a two-year diploma in advertising and public relations. He received designations as an accredited business communicator (ABC) in 1991 and an accredited public relations practitioner (APR) in 1993. In 2002, he was named a master communicator (MC), which is the highest distinction that can be bestowed on a Canadian member of the International Association of Business Communicators. In 2015, he joined the College of Fellows of the Canadian Public Relations Society (FCPRS).