Although it's technically still in beta, slideshare is definitely worth checking out. Self-described as "the world's largest community for sharing presentations on the web", the site provides searchable, user-provided presentation content - typically Powerpoints or PDFs.
The content is largely made-up of voluntarily posted presentations following conferences. One of the co-founders is Rashmi Sinha, who is a leader in user experience technology, so it's no coincidence that there's a good amount of content on design, research and usability available. For example, a search for "human factors" resulted in 50+ presentations ranging from ethnography, to game design, to farming.
Of course, what typically makes for an engaging in-person presentation (e.g. interesting visuals), is not necessarily effective for reviewing a Powerpoint out of context - ironically, in those cases, text-heavy slides may communicate most thoroughly.
Incidentally, there's a lack of presentations on Industrial Design - hopefully we can encourage presenters at Connecting '07 to post there presentations at Slideshare.
Rob Tannen
