This is the presentation I was carrying around on iPad to my job interviews in June, instead of my resume. I realized that, more than a list of places, clients, and projects that I have done in the past, nothing inspires a conversation like talking about the way I think about things, what I find interesting/important, and what I am passionate about.
Having a social object at the meeting makes the assessment of the work fit easier because two parties are involved in an equal-footing exchange (instead of one-sided conversation style that's a staple of interviews). It also allows a person to tell a story in a personal way that puts work & extracurricular accomplishments in the real-life, relevant context of someone's life (always more interesting than just listing stuff that someone has done). It shows, too, a person's presentation skills and ability to build an argument (which is potentially super-useful for client presentations & meetings). Finally, it's a tangible display of someone's simple know-how of how to put a beautiful-looking deck together.
And it worked out for me, in the best possible way.
p.s. For the obvious reasons, I took out the four case studies that are part of the original deck; they served as examples of my past work & my thinking approach to specific client tasks + deliverables. But everything else is there!
p.p.s. The part of "data mining" is taken from Julian Cole and the part of it is mine.