A little of this, a little of that...

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:40:00 GMT

We're geared up to deliver a great product release on Saturday November 21. With new features making it easy to personalize content and manage communication preferences, we're certain you'll find something you need!

In addition to the features we announced in our recent newsletter, there are some other changes I wanted to share with you.

First, for those of you looking to track additional data on your users, you'll be pleased to know we've added 6 new custom fields to the user profile. These can be used when adding or editing a user profile, and can be populated when bulk uploading users.

Next, we've made it easier for you to add questions that retain the look and feel of the presentation you are working on. Now when you upload a presentation, we'll look to see if it contains a slide background design. If it does, we'll automatically add that background to your question background library. In addition, once you choose a question background in a presentation, we'll remember that choice and continue to use it for additional questions added to that presentation.

We hope these little 'extras' will make your experience with Brainshark that much better - enjoy!

Kristin

Customer Connection Tours Continue -- next stops Hartford & Denver

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:54:00 GMT

In the first half of 2009, the Brainshark Customer Community team visited customers in San Francisco, New York City, Toronto, Houston and Dallas. Our primary objective of these city tours is to provide customers the opportunity to meet one another and share your stories. Recently, we've switched the format of the meetings by sponsoring lunches and adding both Brainshark and product update details to the gatherings. We've also extended our visits an extra day to make ourselves available to you for onsite visits. The feedback has been very positive from those we had lunch with this September in Charlotte, Atlanta, Omaha and Lincoln. And it's been rewarding to see people exchange business cards and schedule follow up conversations.

The last two lunches for this year will be in Hartford (CT) on Tuesday, November 10th and Denver (CO) on Wednesday, November 18th. Invitations will be coming out in mid-October.

Click here to register

At the October 7th Customer User Group meeting, we received nominations for next year in Phoenix, Houston/San Antonio and Chicago. I am thinking of Minneapolis and Toronto as well, but would love to hear your suggestions! Please feel free to comment or reach out to me.

Tibby tips the scales at PPT Live

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:17:00 GMT

Hello from PPT Live in Atlanta. I have been having a great time meeting the fine people down here. I have had a couple of chances to meet folks and get some pictures taken which you can check out by watching my presentation below. Just in case you are wondering the music is called Jump the Shark and was created by my friend Mark.

Have a Sharktastic Day!

Tibby

Best Practices for Script Writing for Audio Presentations

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:56:00 GMT

Earlier this week I was fortunate enough to host a great web conference. Marshall Makstein from eSlide and Jordan Rich from WBZ and Chart Productions joined me in presenting a Best Practices session on script writing, slide design and narration. The content was very well received, we've split the replays out into the three presentations below so they're more digestable. I hope you enjoy these presentations and have a Sharktastic Day!

Scripting
http://www.brainshark.com/brainsharkinc/vu?pi=433775124

Slide Design
http://www.brainshark.com/brainsharkinc/vu?pi=897367490

Narration
http://www.brainshark.com/brainsharkinc/vu?pi=533703282

Best Practices for Script Writing for Audio Presentations

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:46:00 GMT

Earlier this week we hosted a web conference that covered the key elements of multimedia presentation design - scripting, slide design and narration. I was fortunate enough to be joined by Marshall Makstein from eSlide and Jordan Rich from WBZ and Chart Productions. A replay will be posted in this blog next week, but I wanted to post the portion I discussed which was the Best Practices for script writing.

Script Writing is challenge for many folks but I came up with 10 tips to help you build a great script and a successful presentation. I hope you enjoy it and you have a Sharktastic Day!

Completion Criteria: The Greatest Little Feature You Never Knew You Had!

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:48:00 GMT

Not taking advantage of Brainshark's completion criteria? Why not?! It's easy to set a minimum bar of how much audio your viewing audience is required to listen to, how many slides they must view, as well as what score they must achieve on examination questions. Authors can easily set completion criteria right from the Presentation Properties tab.

So now that we're all excited about completion criteria - let me tell you about how we've made it even better! We now offer a completion indicator that can be displayed on the Brainshark player, so your viewing audience is aware of their progress. You can even choose to share with them the details of their progress, either by making the new indicator a link to a summary of their completion status, or by using our branching feature to link to their results when complete.

We invite you to check out these great updates available on September 11 (as well as a shiny new 'Users by Folder' report) by viewing the following Brainshark:

Enjoy the updates - and keep that feedback coming!

Kristin

Dumb-Dumb Bullets

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:27:00 GMT

The July issue of Armed Forces Journal has an article about everybody's favorite topic, PowerPoint. You have to love the title and then reflect on the pot-shots taken. The author is a recently retired Marine with 30 years experience and is pursuing a doctorate in history at Oxford. His key point focuses on decision-making and its implications when briefings are done via PPT.

I found the most telling comment was.... "Further, it is an accepted reality that PowerPoint presentations - particularly important ones - inevitably are disseminated to a much wider audience than those attending the brief. We have created huge staffs and they are all hungry for information. This means most of the people who actually see the brief get an incomplete picture of the ideas presented. Some briefers attempt to overcome this by writing whole paragraphs in the briefing notes portion of the slide."

Imagine if the Marines had Brainshark! In their voice, the briefer could provide a context for the visuals which would result in greater consistency of message within the chain of command. Think about using Brainshark to move your organizations decision-making process along. Click here to read the article.

Our Latest Product Release

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 07:47:00 GMT

Have you heard the news? The latest release of Brainshark is now available! We're so excited to continue to offer improvements and enhancements to our product.

For this release, we introduced the "Add a Photo" feature, making it easy to enhance you presentations with a variety of photo formats. We've also improved the handling of document slides, making it easier for your viewers to seamlessly review your content.

With these great improvements, as well as updated reports and video enhancements, we think you'll be as excited as we are! Check out the latest enhancements by reviewing the Brainshark below.

Enjoy!

Kristin

Corporate Travel Declines 42% in Q2

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:10:00 GMT

Last night American Express (NYSE:AXP) reported (during their quarterly earnings call) a record corporate travel decline of 42%. This was well below analysts' expectations of 20-30% decline. Further, The Q2 corporate travel data also marks the fourth consecutive quarterly deceleration. The AMEX data referenced above is a dollar amount and does not equate perfectly to the quantity of business trips being taken; however, analysts believe the two will generally correlate directionally. Their takeaway is that "corporate travel is anemic with no convincing indications of stabilization". This should come as no surprise to any of us. As I spend time talking with our customers (Brainshark has over 1,000 customers representing nearly every industry) I am consistently hearing that travel is shut down. Managers are being told by their bosses to get creative and find new ways to communicate and get the job done.

This is not a bad thing. In the past we thought nothing of running to the airport at a moment's notice to go visit a client or prospect. There was practically no consideration to the excessive costs in terms of time and money (not to mention massive carbon emissions) - that was just the way it was done. But the deep recession we are facing changed all that fast. Luckily we have the internet and a number of very good collaborative technologies that allow businesspeople to communicate, share, present, sell, market, support and train - without the enormous cost and hassle of travel. On-demand presentation solutions like Brainshark, plus web conferencing, video, telepresence, mobile devices, social networking are outstanding tools to "get the job done" fast and efficient. It also lets us spend more time with our families, which is something we can all appreciate.

Don't get me wrong. There are instances when sitting face to face in a business meeting is essential. We just don't need to do that all the time.

I'd like to hear how your company is using alternatives to solve the challenge of travel restrictions.

Regards,
Joe

Lead with vision in your presentation

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:55:00 GMT

Below is a wonderful presentation created by Nancy Duarte of Duarte Design. It appears in her slide:ology blogand the reason I share it is because it lives and breathes best practices. Nancy uses rich media to tell an impactful story in less than 3 minutes. The blog entry is about a unique story board method that helped Nancy bring the story to life. The aspect I appreciate is the forethought of the audience impact of the design. All too often, in business we skip this aspect. Sales and marketing content can be designed around what we want to say instead of from the perspective of what our audience will likely hear. Her presentation follow my 4C mantra of being clear, concise, consistent and compelling and that is because it is designed and delivered with the audience in mind. Click on the image below and scroll a little bit the blog to watch the presentation - you will be glad you did.

Have a Sharktastic Day!

Webinar Survey

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:44:00 GMT

Did you know that 94% of people who participate in a webinar multi-task?

Brainshark is conducting a survey about how companies are adjusting their approach to live and on-demand webinars and web events in 2009. The survey which was released this week focuses on the relationship the live webinar and the replay have to each other.

If you have five minutes to respond, we'd greatly appreciate it. In return, we'll share a summary of the results so you can see ways that your peers have adjusted their strategies to reduce costs and produce more effective web events.

To begin click on SURVEY

Thank you in advance. Your individual responses will not be shared, only aggregate data will be reported.

You Have the Freedom to Build Great Content

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:57:00 GMT

Last week I wrote about using tone of voice to set the tone for your audience. I thought an example might help. So below are two presentations. They are substantially the same with the exception of the recorded voiceover. Take a moment to watch them both and then ask yourself which one is more impactful.

Bad

Better

Have a Sharktastic Holiday

Set the Tone with Your Tone of Voice

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:04:00 GMT

When people hear your voice in a multi media presentation like Brainshark they are emotionally impacted by the tone you use when speaking. You can use your tone of voice to set the tone for the presentation. Your tone will either convince people that you are enthused, interested and confident and they will stay to listen to more or it won't and they won't.

Here are 10 things to consider when recording your presentation

1. Be familiar with the script. The best way to not sound like you are reading when you are reading is to have read the material at least twice before recording. When you are familiar with the text you can focus on delivery and you will do a better job.

2. Practice out loud. The presentation will be listened to and so it is important for you to practice it and hear it out loud. This is usually the time that you discover words and phrases that should not be put together because they are difficult to articulate.

3. Be upbeat. Enthusiasm is contagious, so spread it liberally. An enthusiastic tone communicates interest and confidence. People like to listen to interesting, confident people. The converse is also true.

4. Smile. It may feel silly at first, but it is hard to not to be upbeat with a smile on your face. Your audience will notice the difference. If it helps, put a mirror on your desk to see if you are smiling.

5. Sit up straight. Or even stand up if it helps. The point is to make sure that you are breathing deeply by having good posture. Breathing from the diaphragm helps you speak with a stronger more confident tone.

6. Speak conversationally. You are giving a presentation so speak as you would if you were standing in front of an audience. Speaking too quickly or slowly will make the audience uncomfortable and they will choose not to listen.

7. Speak clearly. You want to make sure you pronounce your words correctly however; over articulation is also a big mistake. Your audience will appreciate clarity but they will take over articulation as the communication of a condescending tone. If you follow hint #6 you will be fine.

8. Drink water. Lubricate your vocal chords and they will perform better.

9. Listen. Record the presentation, listen to the recording and then answer this question: "Does it sound like I care?" If the answer is "Yes" then you are done. If the answer is "Maybe", or "No", then you have to record it again until the answer is a definite "Yes".

10. Have fun. If you are enjoying yourself then your audience will feel it by hearing it in your voice and they will listen to more of what you have to say and believe it when you are saying it.

Have a Sharktastic Day!

Screen Recording Made Easy

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:49:00 GMT

There are many screen recording tools available on the market today. They tend to vary greatly in terms of cost and functionality. For those looking to enhance their presentations by adding screen recordings, Brainshark has an easy to use, affordable solution!

We are pleased to make available the TipCam for Brainshark. We partnered with uTIPu to offer our customers this incredibly user friendly screen recording tool. Also, we've done some integration so that you can upload your captures directly to Brainshark!

If you are interested in purchasing a license of this tool, please click here. For more information on how it works, including a sample screen recording, please view the following Brainshark presentation:

Happy recording!

Kristin

Six Steps to Success - A Communication Strategy

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:05:00 GMT

In the 10 years that we have been helping clients communicate, we have found that there are clearly a set of keys to the best and most successful presentations. When I boiled it down we had the Six Steps to Success. Each step indicates a critical piece of the communication process and comes with a set of questions that need to be asked and answered. I have written about this in earlier blog entries, but now there is a Brainshark that quickly presents the 6 steps and the key questions that need to be answered in order to build great content. The presentation below is not about how to use Brainshark as much as it is about how to communicate successfully. It is a strategy for approaching and executing a quality communication. Whether you are training a channel, providing rapid elearning to the sales force, selling a new product, generating leads or orienting new hires, you will find the Six Steps to Success will guide you to create the right content for the right audience at the right time.

If you prefer and audio podcast of this content then click on the Brainsahrk logo!

Have a Sharktastic Day!

Customer Connection Tour: Toronto

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:42:00 GMT

For the third time this year, we went on the road to visit customers. The first week of June brought us to Rochester and Toronto for 10 meetings. In Rochester, CEO Joe Gustafson joined us in briefing executives of a key Brainshark customer.

Then a 2.5 hour drive to Toronto--Imagine Chicago meets San Francisco with a touch of London. Meetings included an on-site User Group meeting with 15 authors at one of our banking customers. We also visited the local office of a partner, Intercall (see photo from their office of the Old City Hall). The tour is a great opportunity to strategize on projects, talk about new features, review customer presentations..... In 2009, we have been to San Francisco/Silicon Valley and Texas and email me if you would like to nominate your city for a Customer Connection Tour.

Exciting New Features - Now Available!

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 08:02:00 GMT

Last week we launched the latest release of Brainshark to our customers. This new release includes many terrific features, including support for Single Sign-On (SSO), a new and improved Brainshark Content Network, the ability to upload directly from your content portal, and more!

If you haven't done so already, I invite you to check out our latest release. You'll find all the details on our product page, along with a history of our last several releases in case you missed anything. And, we've added a "What's New" link from the product navigation so you can always visit the product page to learn the latest news and updates.

We have gotten some very positive feedback about the latest version of Brainshark and would love to hear from you as well. Please email us any comments or feedback that you'd like to share. We hope to hear from you!

Kristin

Podcasting is "No problem" with Brainshark

Fri, 22 May 2009 07:50:00 GMT

I spoke to the marketing director of a mutual fund firm this week and she was asking me if I had any ideas on how they could get a couple of high profile fund managers to record a podcast. She knew Brainshark had a button called "Create a podcast" but she wasn't sure how it worked or if it would help her.

Her problem was that the fund managers were not based in the same city and neither had the time to fly to the home office to sit in a recording studio to create the audio files. She did not have the option of saying it could not be done because her VP instructed her to find a way and get the content posted.

"No problem", I told her. Then I explained to her that all she had to do was get the fund managers on a conference call. She would conference in the Brainshark IVR to record the call. When the call was over all she had to do was click the enable podcast button in Brainshark and we would give her the finished podcast in .mp3 format ready for posting, or if she preferred she could link to the audio file. The hard part would be preparing the speakers to deliver a quality podcast.

She went back to her VP and was pleased to announce she had a solution and would get the podcast done and posted this week. And she did.

Have a Sharktastic Memorial Day!

Digital Immigrants vs. Digital Natives

Wed, 20 May 2009 16:13:00 GMT

Last week, Lisa Katze from Xerox visited our Waltham, MA office and she talked about two types of people; Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives. She was referring to those who started using digital technologies after lets say, about 12 years old as being immigrants, and those that started using digital technologies at under 12 years old as natives. One could argue a younger or older age, but right around the time a child might be given a cell phone seems to be a useful demarcation point. Children are getting independent enough that parents want to have their little ones digitally accessible.

What does this have to do with on-demand web presentations? I recently visited the sales team of a customer and was told the "immigrants" were having a hard time wrapping their heads around Brainshark, while the "natives" got it. I found a different story. Those sales people who have been at their craft for a long time, immediately saw the value and were using Brainshark for their prospecting and were looking to take advantage of Brainshark throughout the sales cycle. The less seasoned sales people were trying to figure out how Brainshark fit into a craft they were still learning.

Think of the many immigrants who came to this country with skills and experience from their homeland and with the right tools, hard work and a little luck were able to prosper. On June 10 at 2pm, we are having a User Group meeting for those who use Brainshark for sales and we hope to share more stories with you. Please register at http://events.brainshark.com/brainsharkinc/series09/

Are Your Meetings Still So 1.0?

Sun, 17 May 2009 23:37:00 GMT

In an interview published in yesterdays' NY Times, "Meetings, Version 2.0, at Microsoft" Steve Ballmer describes what a meeting with him is like at Microsoft.

As he describes the "old way", many can relate to the typical way that meetings are delivered across organizations every day - someone delivering a PowerPoint presentation in which a room full of listeners follow the presenter's path to the conclusion. Is this really the most productive way? Neither presenters nor listeners maximize their valuable time together that could instead be used on informed discussion and interaction. Time is money, spending face-to-face time on information delivery is very costly. Read about his version of a better meeting.

The Brainshark leadership team holds its weekly meetings in 2.0 style - but different from Steve Ballmer's approach, we deliver Brainshark presentations to update our peers on each of our functional areas, and we share them with each other the day before the meeting. The updates provide operational results and progress reports, and raise discussion topics that should be covered as a group. Compared to Steve Ballmer's flat PPT decks that don't have the presenter's voice to explain, clarify, and paint a picture; I think that would make our approach a 3.0. In this way, we can start preparing and thinking about important topics before walking into the meeting; instead of spending costly meeting time simply delivering information. Try this new approach for your next meeting; and let us know how it goes.

Spring at Last: Brainshark Little League

Fri, 08 May 2009 15:57:00 GMT

It's finally REALLY Spring in New England and a fresh, youthful energy is in the air - what better embodies that than a bunch of kids playing baseball in the green grass? The Brainshark Little League Team is off to a good start this season at 1-1.

Go Team Brainshark!

Silverpop Engaged Marketer Award for Email Marketing

Tue, 05 May 2009 16:54:00 GMT

Today I was proud to accept an award from Silverpop for our use of their Engage B2B Marketing Automation solution. It was exciting to be awarded such an honor, especially when you consider that the users of Silverpop solutions are among the best and brightest marketers I've met. Their stories about how they are using engagement marketing to reach, nurture, qualify, and maintain customer relationships are truly impressive. Our use of the Silverpop product is quite innovative - even among these talented and creative marketing professionals.

So, in the tradition of thanking the academy... First and foremost my team deserves the credit for this award, without their hard work, dedication, and constant commitment to improving our marketing programs, this simply would not have been possible. Thanks also go to Joan Babinski and David Fitzgerald for their executive leadership and for empowering my team to execute effective programs. Thanks also go to the engineering team for building such a powerful product, Brainshark, and for having the vision to see the possibilities of Salesforce.com integration.

Bill Nussey, Silverpop CEO, presented the award and when doing so took extra time to call attention to the innovative solutions Brainshark offers and to the innovative approach we take.

Go Sharks!

-Ed Thompson

"Did You Know?": Question Branching

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:19:00 GMT

From time to time I'd like to use this blog to remind our customers of some of the great but lesser known features available in Brainshark. Today I thought I would start with Question Branching.

Some use cases may include:

Sales & Marketing -- You have a suite of products or services and you want identify what the prospect is most interested in and direct them accordingly.
Training -- A student incorrectly answers a question and you'd like to direct them back to the content to review it again.
HR Onboarding -- You want to direct a new employee to complete forms that are relevant to them, so you may want to ask them questions about their interest in participating in certain program offerings.

These are just a few of the ways that you might use Question Branching. Based on their response to a question, you can redirect viewers to another point in the same presentation, to an entirely new Brainshark presentation, or to a designated URL.

You are able to set-up branching when adding or editing a question in your presentation. In the example below, I have chosen to branch the viewer to a different point in my presentation that corresponds to the product offering in which they are most interested:

For more information on using questions and branching in Brainshark, please click here.

Kristin

p.s. Do you have some suggestions for features you'd like to see discussed on our product blog? If so, please email the product team with your feedback.

Todays WSJ: Strategies for Survival

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:22:00 GMT

The Special Olympics World Winter Games, a Brainshark nonprofit grant customer, is featured in today's Wall St. Journal! The WSJ article "Helping Themselves" describes how nonprofits are cutting costs and raising revenues in the midst of fewer donations and declining investment --- and we're thrilled to be mentioned! Games organizers used Brainshark to reduce costly in-person training.

See the presentation that was used to train 5,000 volunteers:

If you are involved in a nonprofit, whether it's your full time job or your passion outside of work, visit the our non-profit page to learn how Brainshark can be used to cost-effectively raise awareness, train volunteers, recruit members, raise funds, and more.

Using Video in Brainshark

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 09:17:00 GMT

Do you have a library of old corporate videos and need a way to repurpose them?
Are you creating product demo's using screen capture tools and looking for a better way to add your voice and distribute them?

Why not use Brainshark to host your video files? You can easily add video to an existing Brainshark presentation, or just upload a video file to create a new Brainshark. It's as simple as choosing the new 'Upload Video' link under the Things You Can Do menu.

With our February release, we announced support for FLV videos in addition to our existing support for SWF videos. What does this mean? If you upload videos in these formats we can play them right in the Brainshark player. That means your viewers can easily pause or play the video, and advance and rewind to points in the file.

You may also continue to upload alternative video types. These however will attempt to play using a video player on the viewer's computer. We are actively working to enhance our video support so that we can accept any common format and play it in our flash player. More to come!

For more information, check out our best practices for using video.

Kristin

p.s. In case you didn't hear, we increased our file upload limit to 100MB in our March release. So what are you waiting for? Let's get those videos "Brainsharked" today!