PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Amtrak Ride to San Diego

I took the Amtrak again to San Diego—Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner goes all the way through most of Southern California to San Diego. Along the way, you get to see spectacular scenery, including a seaside ride for some part of the way between San Juan Capistrano and Oceanside.

I started from Simi Valley—after a few stops, the train chugged into Los Angeles station for a half an hour halt. I found these birds on an empty rail track (see below).

Got to San Diego at 10 minutes past 3 in the afternoon, and was in the hotel by 4 pm. Met some conference folks in the lobby, checked in, and then the jet lag hit me!

Filed Under: Companion Programs
Tagged as: Amtrak, Companion Programs, PowerPoint Live, San Diego

Focus on Microsoft AutoCollage 2008

It can often take hours to create the perfect collage using tools in programs like Adobe Photoshop, and even then, the collages created may not work all the time. And when you want a quick collage, and don’t really have the time to create it, then you’ll really want to look at this new tool called AutoCollage 2008.

AutoCollage 2008 is a standalone application which allows users to compile a set of photographs into one seamless collage. The output can be printed, used in e-postcards, web pages or desktop backgrounds, or e-mailed to family and friends.

Explore AutoCollage 2008, an application that creates a seamless collage from photographs.

Filed Under: Reviews
Tagged as: Design, Graphics, Microsoft, Review

Interview with the Microsoft PowerPoint Content Publishing Team

This has to be among the most interesting interviews we have done with anyone—mainly because we were not interviewing just one person! This team of six comprises some of the most amazing folks we have interacted with—together they take care of all the content that you will find on the PowerPoint section of the Office Online site at Microsoft.

Kudos to Mary Sobczyk for patiently coordinating with me on this—and Shellie Tucker, Eric Schmidt, Joy Miller, Jen Zamora, and Eric Jensen—you’ll find them all pictured below.

In this exclusive Indezine interview, they discuss how they work as a team, and what factors influence the creation of new content for the PowerPoint part of the Office Online site.

In this interview, the team discusses creation of content for the PowerPoint site.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Eric Jensen, Eric Schmidt, Interviews, Jen Zamora, Joy Miller, Mary Sobczyk, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Office Online, PowerPoint, Shellie Tucker

SlideShare Announces Contest Winners

SlideShare announced the winners of its The World’s Best Presentation Contest, and the results include some amazing presentations.

The overall winner is Thirst, a presentation that brings alive the impending worldwide water shortage that’s staring at mankind. Interestingly, this presentation was created by Jeff Brenman. He also won the first prize in the last contest that SlideShare held. We interviewed Jeff last year for his Shift Happens presentation.

Footnotes, a photo slide show that documents Melanie’s journey through photos of her feet, won the second prize for its novel theme while the third prize was won by a presentation about the crisis in Zimbabwe.

The judges for this contest included Guy Kawasaki, who conceptualized this entire presentation contest concept. Other judges were Nancy Duarte, Garr Reynolds, and Bert Decker.

And at Indezine, we have something exclusive for you — an interview with Rashmi Sinha of SlideShare. Rashmi talks about this contest, her favorite entries, and more.

And here are some statistics: the contest this year attracted 2415 entries and 22,000 votes from voters in 130 countries. There are 3 overall winners, 6 category winners, and 9 honorable mentions. The first, second, and third prize winners will receive a MacBook Air, Amazon Kindle, and an iPod Nano, respectively. Winners in each category will receive an iPod Touch.

Here are embeds of the three winning entries:

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: Companion Programs
Tagged as: Bert Decker, Contest, Garr Reynolds, Guy Kawasaki, Jeff Brenman, Nancy Duarte, Online Presentations, PowerPoint, Rashmi Sinha, SlideShare

The World’s Best Presentation Contest: Conversation with Rashmi Sinha

Rashmi Sinha is the co-founder and CEO of SlideShare, the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. She manages design and business development at SlideShare. Previously, she founded Uzanto, a user experience software company that worked with companies like eBay, iFilm, AAA, and Blue Shield. She also led the team that created MindCanvas, a rich online survey platform for customer research. Rashmi has a PhD in Cognitive Neuropsychology from Brown University. She did a PostDoc at UC Berkeley in Human-Computer Interaction. She blogs about social software and running a startup.

Geetesh: Tell us how the idea of The World’s Best Presentation Contest evolved.

Rashmi: The idea of the contest came from Guy Kawasaki. We had toyed with the idea of a contest earlier. I met Guy at a conference, and he mentioned that he had always wanted to organize a PowerPoint contest. We continued talking and discussed several ideas before finalizing on the World’s Best Presentation idea. It was Guy’s idea to keep it general (not focused on any one topic) and not limit to slide-casts (slides with audio) which we considered at one point.

Geetesh: How is this contest being held in 2008 different from the previous one?

Rashmi: The 2008 contest is bigger – 1670 entries so far compared to 400 last week. Partly it’s simply because SlideShare has grown. But also, the results of the contest last year captured the imagination of many people, and this year they have decided to participate as well.

Also, we were inspired by global contests and events like the Oscars and the Olympics. We really wanted a sense of scale (all the world participating), but we also wanted an openness that you can only have on the internet (anyone with a computer and internet connection can participate). PowerPoint is a people’s medium. We wanted a people’s contest.

Its really great to see that come alive as the contest captures the imagination of people the world over. We see slideshows from all across the world. We see blog posts and tweets from across the world. It’s really quite cool.

Also, we have six category prizes this year that we did not have last year. Finally, we have participants from many more countries (it is truly an international contest).

Geetesh: Tell us about some entries that you find unconventional, strange, funny, or just different.

Rashmi: Here are some interesting ones this time in the contest; one interesting trend is that last time, the contest was the first time, and so many of the entries were from the early adopters; this time, the audience seems to be far more broad-based.

There’s a bunch of presentations on green, environment, etc., and they are all very popular (getting lots of votes)

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: Contest, Interviews, Online Presentations, PowerPoint, Rashmi Sinha, SlideShare