Geetesh Bajaj went from designing slides as a hobby to becoming a Microsoft MVP for 23 consecutive years and a consultant to presentation companies. He talks about how AI tools like Copilot are changing presentations, and the strange new possibility of AI clones delivering keynote talks.
Questions this video answers
April 6, 2025.
23 years (consecutive).
Chapters
And then use AI as a starting point. It's awesome. You can create content with that, you can create images with that technology using AI. Microsoft's own copilot AI stuff. But AI is not you. It doesn't replace you. It only makes you better and use it wisely and to help you a lot that way.
And speaking of getting better, a lot of our viewers in our remaining time would really like to know how you worked your way up your career because you started off doing this as a hobby, then you were designing slides. But then you worked your way up to a position of real thought leadership where companies around the world are paying you as a consultant to help them tell us the various steps you took to get to that thought leadership. By the way, you have written a number of books which anyone who wants to check those out, they can find those on Amazon and other online bookstores. But take us just briefly through that journey of how you worked your way up the food chain of the PowerPoint world.
So I partly spoke about it, how I got started into doing presentations and start creating the website in design. And soon after that after I was awarded as an MVP Microsoft Most Valuable Professor. My 23rd year, consecutive year of being an MVP. And what has happened along the way is I have designed presentations and interacted with lot clients. I have attended a lot of industry events. And what I found like around nine or ten years ago is a lot of people are asking me questions and I'm helping them out. So essentially I was to some extent doing consulting. So again this was organic and part of evolving I got into. And now what I primarily do is do consulting to presentation companies, PowerPoint, add in developers, PowerPoint designers and patients and stuff like that. So, so that's, that's how I got there. Naturally there's, it's not as easy to go detail about describing 23, 25 years of what I've done in, you know, such a little time. There's so much more to that, but this is how the journey has been.
When you look into your crystal ball, where do you see things going in say the next five, ten years? Now I started something recently almost as a, not a complete joke, but almost. I started a cloning speaker bureau and so my clone is available to give keynote speeches. In theory, someone can have their clone speaking and then have their, their slides, their PowerPoint slides coming up and down. Others might say well that's too gimmicky and we want the real person. Do you see clones being a part of people? Because I, I let me Step back. I do see clones as a part of the, of the future. So many executives, experts are asked to give speeches all the time. And let's say someone needs me in, in Hyderabad where you are, but it needs to be 9am Your time. Well, that's one in the morning for me. I just, I can't get up, especially if they're not paying a full fee. But I could have my clones speak at any length of time and do Q and A. So I, I really do see that happening. But I'm wondering what you see as the future as AI takes a lot of different forms, clones being one of them.
This is something that's, you know, it's still evolving to say what's going to happen in the next few years. It's very difficult because we did not know a few years ago what would happen today. And having said so, about the clone stuff, you, you say your clone goes and represents you. But then what if some questions are asked of the clone? Okay. And the clone gives answers. AI fed into the clone. But isn't it possible that if you were there, live in person, you probably would have given a different answer?
Well, you know, I tested that. First of all, my clone doesn't pull. And the way most people's clones are, if they do it right, it's not pulling from the Internet. It's only pulling from my books and, you know, my other books and my online courses and my YouTube, what I've actually said on YouTube. So if someone asks me something that I haven't written about or talked about, my clone is programmed to say, hey, you got me. I don't know. So it's, it's transparent there. So it's not like it's going to start giving people solutions to the Middle east crisis when that's not something I've written about or talked about or want to get involved with. So in answer to your question, I think sometimes I give a lot better answers than my clone does. Sometimes they're pretty similar. But if I'm being honest and fair, sometimes my clone gives a better answer because it has more detail, it has a perfect memory and recall, whereas mine doesn't. So we'll talk about this again next time.
