open letter to Sophie Wilmès

Dear Mrs Wilmès,
Dear Sophie,

Everyone will agree that we live in extremely confusing times. The Coronavirus and the threat it poses are putting strain on everyone, including our policymakers.
I take the liberty of saying that this is particularly true of you as Prime Minister. In spite of everything, you have succeeded in conveying things in a controlled and confident manner in order to reassure the population and to give them a helping hand for the future.

I don’t wish to offend you, but the National Security Council press conference was a missed opportunity to come across as reassuring. At least when it comes to the PowerPoint presentation.
I know that the circumstances were not ideal to put together a slick presentation in a very short time. I am fully aware that time pressure can be invoked as a mitigating circumstance. But all this should not be an excuse to come up with a poor quality presentation, as was the case last night. Confirming the cliché of the boring PowerPoint. I’m so sorry because I know it can be so much better!

As an entrepreneur I have a societal role to play and in this situation I see the opportunity to give something back to the community, unpaid and with a great deal of enthusiasm. The population has the right to clear communication and comprehensible messages. If you, as prime minister, decide to use a supporting PowerPoint for this purpose, I would like to help.

That is why I make myself and my specialist team available to allow the future PowerPoint presentation of the National Security Council to be professionally and visually attractively developed. Please see it as a way to do my bit in these times of crisis and to support messages better right away.
To convince you of our expertise our team has taken the bull by the horns. Below we make a number of suggestions as to how it could have been done differently.

I hope you are enthusiastic about our proposal and look forward to your response.

With presentable regards,
Lieven Doise