Keynote's just the state of the art in Powerpoint presentations. Your nearest copy of your favorite OpenOffice clone will more than suffice at the same task.
I dont have any experience with keynote, but libreoffice (as its called these days!) is a nightmare. Handcoding html/css is, for this audience, easier and less frustrating. Actual powerpoint is somewhat doable, except for the whole having-to-boot to windows. There is a cognitive dissonance that just gets on your nerves.
So, in the general case, for the technically handicapped Powerpoint may be an alternative, but people in the industry are either using Linux or OSX. So, that leaves them with keynote (which im not familiar with) or some webbased solution.
LibreOffice presentations are not usable by anyone. And learning the idiosynchrasies of powerpoint seems like a much bigger assault on our patience, than just coding it up.
I do have to admit, that on an iPad, keynote could be brilliant. Touch makes a lot of sense for something this visual. But i havent tried that version of keynote either,
