PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

myBrainshark Pro: Conversation with Andy Zimmerman

Andy Zimmerman, VP of Business Development at Brainshark, Inc., is responsible for developing and managing strategic partnerships and programs. Andy oversees myBrainshark, a site where users can create, share, and track the impact of multimedia presentations for free. Recently, he helped launch the new myBrainshark Pro solution – providing small-office/home-office (SOHO) and individual business users with enhanced functionality for more targeted outreach and measurable results.

In this conversation, Andy talks about myBrainshark Pro.

Geetesh: What extra levels does the new myBrainshark Pro add to the capabilities for existing myBrainshark users?

Andy: myBrainshark Pro brings advanced features to users of the free myBrainshark service – where you can still create, share, and track on-demand multimedia presentations at absolutely no cost. myBrainshark allows anyone to simply upload content – such as a PowerPoint presentation – and add voice narration, MP3 audio, video clips, survey questions, attachments and more. Then, you can share the resulting presentation as a link in an email or through social media.

Now, with myBrainshark Pro, you can deliver your communications in an even more targeted and measurable way. We designed the new capabilities with small-office/home-office professionals and individual business users in mind. These groups are increasingly seeing the benefit of multimedia, social media, and high-quality content creation tools – and looking to use them at a price point that makes sense for their business. With that in mind, we designed the upgrade path such that users could add the following advanced “Pro” features to any myBrainshark presentation starting at just $9.99/month:

• Share your presentation privately. Currently, all content on myBrainshark is publicly available. By marking a presentation as private, you can ensure that your message reaches only your intended audience.
• Apply password protection to presentations. This option offers additional security.
• Add a “guestbook.” You can collect an unlimited number of leads or ensure training compliance with a “guestbook” – a registration form placed at the beginning or end of your presentation, capturing viewers’ contact information and other relevant details.
• Create and send personalized URLs (PURLs). This is an option for monitoring individual viewing activity on presentations without a guestbook.
• Access viewing details. myBrainshark currently gives users anonymous and aggregate viewing data about their presentations. With a Pro subscription, you can see who viewed your presentation, when, how much they watched, how survey questions were answered, and more.

The myBrainshark Pro features give myBrainshark users the opportunity to drive greater results and communicate in more ways –- enabling them to create, deliver and track targeted presentations as part of a lead generation campaign; be better informed for sales follow-up; share proprietary information and monitor viewing activity; send a “talking résumé” to a potential employer and know if it’s being seen and by whom; and much more.

Geetesh: I read that myBrainshark Pro features are presentation-specific – rather than being applied to all content in a user’s account. What are the advantages for end users with this approach?

Andy: You’re right – we’ve set it up so myBrainshark users can apply Pro features to any presentation they’ve created for a monthly fee of $9.99 per presentation – with discounts applied when users apply Pro features to five or more presentations. You can disable a presentation’s Pro status at any time too – letting you apply the Pro features to another one of your presentations at no additional charge. And, as I mentioned, you can still create as many myBrainshark presentations as you’d like without Pro features for free.

There are various benefits of applying Pro features on a presentation-by-presentation basis. For example, you may have some presentations you’d like to keep public and visible to a wide audience. This content would remain on myBrainshark, where it’s searchable on the site and indexed by leading search engines. So, by making Pro features presentation-specific, you have the flexibility of deciding which content is best served through Pro functionality and which is better suited to the free myBrainshark features. Both the free and Pro levels provide compelling functionality to help users promote their companies and their expertise, and improve communications outreach and results.

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

Learn PowerPoint 2007: Changing Fill and Border of Charts

Although the default fill and border (outline) that PowerPoint 2007 applies to charts may be perfectly adequate, you might want to play with the Chart Styles found in the Chart Tools Design tab of the Ribbon — all these Styles are based on the Office Theme you have applied to the active presentation, and while this works great most of the time, there will be occasions when you may want to use a color for any of your data series that’s not part of the Theme palette in your presentation. In times like these, you can control the fill and border of chart elements using the techniques explained on this page.

Learn more here.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2007
Tagged as: Charting, PowerPoint 2007, Tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2007 for Windows: Changing Charts Types in PowerPoint 2007

Although charts in PowerPoint 2007 look so much better than charts in previous versions, the chart type offerings are almost similar. PowerPoint 2007 provides all the basic chart types such as column, bar, line, pie, etc. — and also some advanced charts like radar, surface, bubble, doughnut, etc. To change a chart type from one to another, you first need to have a chart in your presentation. Then follow these steps to change the chart type in PowerPoint 2007.

Learn more here.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2007
Tagged as: Charting, PowerPoint 2007, Tutorials

PowerPoint Design: Quotation Slides

One of the strangest things I have found in PowerPoint land is how people create quotation slides — by default no version of PowerPoint has had a separate layout for quotation slides, and so most people just use the default text and bullet layout for quotation slides. Yes, they do make some small changes on the slides such as removing the bullets, and some adventurous folks may also play with the text treatment — but don’t expect any fancy quotation graphics or any changes in the slide layout.

Learn more about designing quotation slides in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2007
Tagged as: Design, PowerPoint 2007, Presentation Samples

Learn PowerPoint 2007 for Windows: Chart Elements in PowerPoint 2007

Charts in PowerPoint comprise several elements that we call chart elements. Typical chart elements include series (and this could be one or more series with values), axes (horizontal, vertical, and in some cases a third axis as well), plot area (the active chart area), legend, chart title, and many more. In this tutorial we’ll learn more about these individual chart elements.

Learn more here.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2007
Tagged as: Charting, PowerPoint 2007, Tutorials