PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

25 Million Brainshark Presentation Views: Conversation with Joe Gustafson

Joe Gustafson, CEO of Brainshark, Inc., founded the company in 1999 to help knowledge experts accelerate the flow of information to their audiences in a highly effective format. Under Joe’s leadership, Brainshark has become a leader in on-demand business communications and a successful Software-as-a-Service company, with more than 1,100 world-class customers, including a third of the Fortune 100. Most recently, Joe has led Brainshark to a series of significant company milestones – with Brainshark presentations netting more than 25 million views, and the company doubling its profits in the last year.

Geetesh: In a recent announcement, your company declared that 25 million Brainshark presentations were viewed since the launch of your flagship product, and 1 Brainshark presentation is viewed every 5 seconds by users around the world. Those types of stats would make anyone proud – what else does it mean to you?

Joe: Not only is it a great milestone for our company, but it’s indicative of how multimedia has become a part of the way people want to communicate and share information – in both our business and personal lives, it has become pervasive. And the most popular content of all on the Web is user-generated – not high production value content – but that which engages and is authentic, because it is created by everyday people who have something to say. And I think businesspeople like me look at this trend, or they see what their kids are creating and sharing over the Web, and think, how can we leverage the power of this in business? If you make it easy for any businessperson to communicate in more powerful ways, and make it possible for their organizations to manage that process across their enterprise – and, at the same time, make it more enjoyable and convenient for their audiences to experience these messages – they will embrace it. That’s what those numbers mean to me.

Geetesh: With such a successful business model for a product that’s not free, what made you decide to go ahead with myBrainshark, that’s a free, albeit less powerful version compared to Brainshark?

Joe: We think we’ve developed the easiest way for any businessperson to communicate using multimedia. But just seeing a Brainshark presentation doesn’t nearly illustrate the possibilities. We want you to try creating one. When you record your very first presentation, and hear your own voice coming back to you over the speakers while you watch it, you’ll see how easy it is to use and how fast it is to create. From that experience, we expect that many users will think about how this could be applicable to their business to get their message out quickly and cost-effectively. Some myBrainshark users will be interested in talking to us about our enterprise offerings – and some won’t; and that’s okay too! We hope they love our free site and tell their friends and colleagues about it.

Our goal with myBrainshark is to get more people exposed to our technology and to how it can be so powerful for business yet be so easy to use. And thousands already “get it” today – more than 1,100 companies whose names you’d recognize already use Brainshark across their organizations and to communicate to global audiences, along with thousands of additional myBrainshark individual users. More than 8 million minutes of content are viewed each month. In an economic climate where everyone is trying to do more with less, it’s silly not to use myBrainshark to tell your story.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Brainshark, Interviews, Joe Gustafson, Online Presentations, PowerPoint

Changing Chart Types in PowerPoint 2003 and 2002 for Windows

PowerPoint provides sample choices in chart types for almost every kind of graphical data representation. There are some basic chart types such as column, bar, line, pie, etc., and advanced charts like radar, surface, bubble, doughnut, etc. Together, all these chart types cater for almost every kind of graphical data representation.

Learn to change the chart type from one to another in PowerPoint 2003 and 2002 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2003
Tagged as: Charting, PowerPoint 2003, Tutorials

myBrainshark: Conversation with Andy Zimmerman

Andy Zimmerman, VP of Business Development, is responsible for developing and managing strategic partnerships and programs for Brainshark, the leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution provider for on-demand presentations. Andy played an integral role in the launch of Brainshark, Inc., in September 2009 and continues to drive the initiative. Prior to Brainshark, Andy launched SaaS offerings for other software providers including Theikos, a leading Salesforce partner (acquired by Astadia) and e-billing provider Edocs (now part of Oracle). Andy earned his BA from Brown University and MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

In this conversation, Andy talks about myBrainshark.

Geetesh: Tell us about the raison d’être for myBrainshark – how did it evolve?

Andy: Brainshark has experienced substantial commercial success over the years – serving as a critical communication vehicle for more than 1,000 companies across industries. We conceived of myBrainshark as a way to reach out to a much larger audience of business professionals, enabling individuals to tap into the benefits of our product with absolutely no price barriers.

Registration is simple and free – then it’s an easy process to create and share on-demand multimedia presentations. You simply upload a PowerPoint presentation or other content, and dial a Brainshark-provided number to add your voice narration or upload MP3 audio. If you’d like, you can also add in video, survey questions and attachments to enhance your presentation. Then, it’s time to share it You can send out a link to your target audience, embed the presentation in your webpage or blog, or share it through social media tools including LinkedIn and Twitter. myBrainshark’s reporting capabilities also enable you to see when people are viewing your presentation, how often it has been viewed and even from where in the world it’s being viewed.

myBrainshark offers a way for people to communicate on and off the job – delivering far-reaching messages at no cost, but with maximum impact to promote themselves, promote their products/companies, and share expertise. We’ve been pleased with the site’s reception and with the creative ways people are using myBrainshark to showcase content –creating everything from sales and marketing materials to training content to “talking résumés” to real estate listings to holiday greetings and much more.

Geetesh: How is myBrainshark different from Brainshark, and the other slide sharing sites like SlideShare, SlideBoom, authorSTREAM, etc.?

Andy: Among our key differentiators as compared to slide sharing sites is the ability to easily incorporate phone or MP3 audio – which has been one of Brainshark’s hallmarks throughout the last decade – helping users create high-quality, personalized presentations. Also, our service preserves PowerPoint animations, so it’s very easy to time your audio appropriately with those animations to deliver maximum impact.

Additional distinguishing features include our ability to support various media types – going beyond PowerPoint presentations to also include documents, videos, web pages and audio-only podcasts. In addition, myBrainshark enables you to incorporate interactivity – such as survey questions – within presentations, and see how your audience responds. With these analytic capabilities, you can even view dashboards showing how, when and from where people are engaging with your presentation Furthermore, presentation pages are search engine optimized – helping more people find your content.

Here’s another unique feature – through myBrainshark, users who are experts on business or training topics can apply online to become “Learning Providers.” As such, they can price their content if desired, while site visitors can preview and/or buy it. The premium content available on myBrainshark currently spans topics including leadership, selling skills, compliance and more.

Of course, myBrainshark is also backed by the Brainshark brand and proven infrastructure, meaning it’s built by a company with the highest standards of quality, reliability and security, which has been helping businesses succeed with on-demand presentations for more than a decade. In fact, this makes for a good transition into the other part of your question – concerning our commercial offerings and differences from myBrainshark.

Like our commercial offerings, myBrainshark has a powerful feature set that lets users differentiate and extend the reach of their communications. Use of myBrainshark is completely free, and content created on the site is publicly available – letting users easily communicate with a worldwide audience. Brainshark’s paid offerings, meanwhile, are geared toward organizations (versus individuals) that often need to share private or proprietary content with their own target audiences.

Brainshark’s commercial offerings also include other enhanced functionality for businesses. Through Brainshark, organizations can easily manage and organize content created by any number of users and manage their access permissions. The tracking and reporting capabilities available to our enterprise users also provide much more granular reports and viewing details. In addition, our enterprise editions provide numerous optional features such as learning management, marketing campaign management, content approval, content archiving, and offline viewing – as well the ability to integrate with CRM, LMS and other software applications.

With both Brainshark and myBrainshark, we continue to help businesses and individuals create far-reaching, high-impact communications that resonate in a measurable way with their audience.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Andy Zimmerman, Brainshark, Interviews, Online Presentations, PowerPoint

PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2009: Conversation with Shawn Toh

Shawn Toh is based out of Singapore and loves to do advanced animation tricks using PowerPoint. He is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP (Most Valuable Professional) and runs the PPT Heaven site.

In this discussion, Shawn discusses the PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2009.

Geetesh: What happens as part of the PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2009? Tell us more about this whole concept.

Shawn: PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2009 is an annual online convention where PowerPointers get together to discuss, review, and submit their latest PowerPoint works. We have received many great works such as games, artworks, and animations from our members and PowerPoint communities in China, and also demos of their upcoming games.

There’s also an eCon Award, which is a form of recognition to recognize a contributor for their hard work and effort for the previous year. The winners are determined through public voting.

Geetesh: How is the 2009 event different than the same eConvention in 2008? And what plans do you have for the next similar event?

Shawn: In this year’s eConvention, TrainSignal has sponsored us with copies of PowerPoint 2007 Training Packages, which we will give away as prizes to the winners. In addition, PowerPointers who have submitted their works on eConvention will also get a chance to win the prize. We will be looking for more sponsors on our next eConvention, and if you are interested, start submitting your works on PowerPoint Heaven!

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Interviews, PowerPoint, Shawn Toh

Campaign Against Death by PowerPoint: Conversation with Ellen Finkelstein

    Ellen Finkelstein is author of several PowerPoint, Flash, and AutoCAD books — she has just launched a new campaign that she calls Campaign Against Death by PowerPoint.

In this conversation, Ellen talks more about this campaign.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Death by PowerPoint, Ellen Finkelstein, Interviews, PowerPoint