Last week, I hung out with my old friend Nate Jaffee. We played a bit of tennis (on the hottest day I can remember in recent history), had the standard and depressing discussion about how we both peaked athletically at age 16, and then got down to the important business of having a few beers and talking about the internet. Nate has spent the past several years working on social media marketing campaigns, first for Mountain Dew and now for Puma, and has spent much of that time trying to figure out how people engage with Facebook pages. It was really interesting to hear, because I spend most of my time talking to, and thinking about, people who build the tools that Nate is a user of. Weirdly, I don't actually know that many people at big (or small) brands who are on the buying end of the social web marketing & advertising. Anyway, Nate made a great point about the internet which I want to repeat here. He said, offhand, that "anyone who is creative, curious, or passionate loves the internet". I'll repeat that, in big letters, because I think it's pretty powerful:
Anyone who is creative, curious, or passionate loves the internet.
I thought that was so great and so right, and it really stuck with me. So I'll just leave it at that.
I wrote the other day about wanting a better way to share slide presentations. I think there is a huge opportunity here, and I don't think anyone has nailed it yet. I consider this to be an open letter to Sliderocket, which is so close to capturing this opportunity but has (in my humble opinion) made a few key mistakes that will prevent it from succeeding. First, the opportunity: every day, all around the world, people give presentations (keynote powerpoint, etc), in meetings, at conferences, and lots of other gatherings. There are a LOT of ideas communicated this way on a daily basis. So many. The sum total of the knowledge included in the world's daily powerpoint output is really really big (regardless of your beliefs on power corrupting and powerpoint corrupting absolutely). This output is typically received in a few ways:
by the people in the room, who get it in real time
Last week, I hung out with my old friend Nate Jaffee. We played a bit of tennis (on the hottest day I can remember in recent history), had the standard and depressing discussion about how we both peaked athletically at age 16, and then got down to the important business of having a few beers and talking about the internet. Nate has spent the past several years working on social media marketing campaigns, first for Mountain Dew and now for Puma, and has spent much of that time trying to figure out how people engage with Facebook pages. It was really interesting to hear, because I spend most of my time talking to, and thinking about, people who build the tools that Nate is a user of. Weirdly, I don't actually know that many people at big (or small) brands who are on the buying end of the social web marketing & advertising. Anyway, Nate made a great point about the internet which I want to repeat here. He said, offhand, that "anyone who is creative, curious, or passionate loves the internet". I'll repeat that, in big letters, because I think it's pretty powerful:
Anyone who is creative, curious, or passionate loves the internet.
I thought that was so great and so right, and it really stuck with me. So I'll just leave it at that.
I wrote the other day about wanting a better way to share slide presentations. I think there is a huge opportunity here, and I don't think anyone has nailed it yet. I consider this to be an open letter to Sliderocket, which is so close to capturing this opportunity but has (in my humble opinion) made a few key mistakes that will prevent it from succeeding. First, the opportunity: every day, all around the world, people give presentations (keynote powerpoint, etc), in meetings, at conferences, and lots of other gatherings. There are a LOT of ideas communicated this way on a daily basis. So many. The sum total of the knowledge included in the world's daily powerpoint output is really really big (regardless of your beliefs on power corrupting and powerpoint corrupting absolutely). This output is typically received in a few ways:
by the people in the room, who get it in real time
by others, via some sort of sharing, like when:
The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
Amazing things happen when people are stuck on a bus together. More on that in a bit. I spent yesterday afternoon with Chiefs of Staff and Chief Information Officers from about 10 US cities, at an event convened by the Harvard Kennedy School and Living Cities (a collaborative of large funders who focus on issues affecting low-income city residents). The focus of yesterday's event was on "civic technology", and specifically, how Living Cities, as a network of major funders, and the Urban Policy Advisory Group (Harvard's network of city leaders) can best take advantage of their scale to do something powerful with it. There was a lot of energy in the room, and I think there's potential for good things to develop around this group. I'll note a few of the ideas that stood out to me: We talk a lot about "civic tech" (this was the title of the event), and a lot of effort goes into developing the right technical strategy. This is, of course, very important, as lots of money is spent, often poorly, on big tech projects, and cities are almost universally mired down with legacy systems that limit their flexibility. But in the closing of the event, I made the point that the really big idea isn't about civic technology, per se, as it is about being networked, and what that means for cities, civic engagement, and how governments work. This is the fundamental shift -- and it affects everything: how city governments work internally, how they relate to their technology vendors, how they treat the relationships between themselves and their constituents. This has been alternately described as "moving from being a problem solver to being a matchmaker", "stepping back and let other people lead", "moving from being a bureaucrat to being a concierge", moving from talker to listener (this applies to things like online conversations as well as data analytics), and moving from a paradigm of control to a paradigm of empowerment. I agree with all of that. I also made the point (and this relates to the first) that "using civic technology well" doesn't necessarily mean building anything new from scratch. Often, it means identifying where activity is already happening in the real world, and applying tech-enabled effort to amplify that activity. Good examples from our past work are the
...and told a story about a group of people who ended up stuck on a bus, in some city, in the middle of the night in a blizzard. Stranded, and far enough away from anything that they couldn't leave, the group got to talking. And apparently, the connections stuck and people remained friends afterwards (they may have done something awesome together too, but I don't remember, and it doesn't really matter). I think it's cool that a simple disruption like that can really change the way people connect with one another. I know from living in NYC that the best times were when something bizarre or messed up happens on the subway. It transforms a group of strangers into a group of kindred spirits; sharing a laugh, wink or smile (or perhaps something more severe like protecting someone -- though I've never been in a position like that -- with a group of strangers is really amazingly cool. And it happens in places like the NYC -- and particularly the subway -- all the time (which I've written about before). Anyway, so the link here is: I wonder what we can do to create more "virtual blizzards" -- little disruptions that create moments where we feel comfortable connecting with our neighbors and city-mates in unexpected, cool, and potentially powerful ways (ideally without threat of an exploding bus). // photo: jokeroo.com
a video of the talk is posted online (for instance, here are all the great talks from this year's Personal Democracy Forum).
This is a decent start, but it's way limiting. It's probably a safe guess that something like 10% of all presentations given on a daily basis are archived in a useful online format. And the online formats available now aren't actually all that useful. BUT - given where we are now with technology and the social web, there's an opportunity to fill this gap. My ideal tool would look like this: 1) Awesome, in-browser editing. In-browser editing is critical - when you're creating your content in-situ (see Fred's good post on this idea here), you can then share, edit, re-share, embed, etc., straight from there. The editing experience should feel great, just like Keynote does, and should ideally be implemented in HTML5, giving it a native in-browser feel (just like the beautiful Moqups). 2) Super easy audio recording. If I'm making a deck for a talk I'm giving somewhere, I'll gladly spend the extra time to do a run-through of audio recording for the online version (as I did with my talk at last week's awesome summit). 3) A handful (don't need a ton) of addons that are native to the web -- analytics, interactivity, embedding, etc. 4) Social - so you can get feedback, collaborate, connect with others, etc. 5) Interoperable - exports to keynote, powerpoint, pdf, youtube, etc. But what about Slideshare?, you might ask. Slideshare was the pioneer in the get-your-powerpoints-online space, but their approach is not web-native or in-situ. They have lots and lots of content, but it's basically crippled without voiceovers (and to a lesser extent, interactivity). They took a stab at it with slidecasts, but it was pretty half-hearted, and it's just plain cumbersome to do (record your own timed MP3 and upload). What about Prezi? Prezi is nice and can create some really beautiful things. I loved Sascha Meinrath's prezi from PdF. Prezi could be great -- downsides I see are that it's a radical paradigm shift with a steep learning curve (not that big a deal), and it still doesn't support audio as far as I can tell (correct me if I'm wrong). But we're getting warmer. What about Sliderocket? There is a reason why I'm calling out Sliderocket in the title of this post. It's because they are SO CLOSE, yet SO FAR AWAY. The vision for the Sliderocket product is wonderful, hitting most of what I outlined above, but the execution sorely misses the mark. Twice now, I've put real effort into switching from Keynote to Sliderocket -- against my own reservations about some of the issues I'll list out below -- and each time I gave up, before switching back again because it's exactly what I want. But in the end, after saying all of the below privately to their customer support team, I just got too frustrated and gave up. First, the good:
Online editor that decently approximates the keynote/powerpoint experience (with a few key downsides which I'll get to in a sec)
All kinds of interactivity built in -- surveys, popups, comments, etc.
Collaboration: both on the editing side (for teams) and the public side (comments etc)
Live embeds with analytics -- see who's watching, how long they're looking at each slide, etc. Awesome and amazing.
Easy sound recording.
So, you might say: wait a minute, they've done absolutely everything you've asked for! And you're right, they have. It's so awesome. Yes. Except: at every single turn, and whenever they have an opportunity, they make choose to make your life harder, not easier, and they make you hate the service, not love it. For example:
Crappy flash UI -- they've built out tons of features, but all using a really clunky flash UI that feels neither like the browser nor like the desktop. It's worse than the web, AND it's worse than the desktop. It just doesn't feel good to use -- it's just a little to slow, just a little too unresponsive. And things tend to break (like this).If that were the extent of it, I could handle it -- and I'd be a sliderocket convert, despite having to get used to a UI that's not as great as it could be. The real kicker, though, is that sliderocket focuses all their attention on a) locking you in and b) goosing you up to their pro plan. And they do it in the most frustrating and manipulative way. For example:
Every features seems like a feature, until you try to use it. Then you get an in-your-face upgrade pitch:
Like accessing analytics: Or even exporting: Really? I can't export to any format without a pro account? The first time I saw this, it was a total dealbreaker. Then, I ultimately came back, because I wanted in-situ, interactive, collaborative, social, in-brower slides. Even the idea that my slides would forever be locked inside the sliderocket platform unless I upgraded didn't permanently dissuade me (the first time) -- the potential for what's here is just so great. And, even if you agree with strategy of pushing all users into the pro account as quickly as possible (I don't), the way to do it is NOT to piss them off at every turn when they're trying to get something done. The way to do it is to make them love your product as it is, and then really really want that shiny thing that would make it SO MUCH BETTER but that you're not crippled without. So, if I were in the drivers seat at Sliderocket, I'd see this huge opportunity and I'd fix it as soon as possible. Because their engagement numbers can't be that good right now -- they can't expect to win over die-hard powerpoint or keynote users with their current lock-in strategy, and they can't expect to win over web geeks with their crappy flash UI (on top of that same lock-in strategy), If I were in charge of Sliderocket, I'd say: We have the opportunity to become the platform for communicating ideas. Like TED or TEDx, but for online slides. That means focusing on getting as many people as possible to love our platform as possible, and to build an amazing community of communicators around it. Specifically, that means:
Drop the hard sell for the pro account. Instead make the free account awesome and fun, and then get creative about other native monetization strategies. For example, look at what visual.ly is doing.
Re-build the UX without all the flash. See Moqups. Or if you still love flash, be more like myBalsamiq (which uses flash for the editor, but wraps it in a very nice HTML experience)
Make portability -- import and export -- a key selling point. You don't need to lock people in -- they will want to use your native features because they are so awesome (embedding, interactivity, audio, etc.). That will always be first choice. But they'll need to be able to dump to PDF, PPT, or Keynote at times too. And a proprietary player isn't enough.
I realize that I'm being preachy here. It's only because I think that there is such a need and an opportunity here, and you're so close.
Amazing things happen when people are stuck on a bus together. More on that in a bit. I spent yesterday afternoon with Chiefs of Staff and Chief Information Officers from about 10 US cities, at an event convened by the Harvard Kennedy School and Living Cities (a collaborative of large funders who focus on issues affecting low-income city residents). The focus of yesterday's event was on "civic technology", and specifically, how Living Cities, as a network of major funders, and the Urban Policy Advisory Group (Harvard's network of city leaders) can best take advantage of their scale to do something powerful with it. There was a lot of energy in the room, and I think there's potential for good things to develop around this group. I'll note a few of the ideas that stood out to me: We talk a lot about "civic tech" (this was the title of the event), and a lot of effort goes into developing the right technical strategy. This is, of course, very important, as lots of money is spent, often poorly, on big tech projects, and cities are almost universally mired down with legacy systems that limit their flexibility. But in the closing of the event, I made the point that the really big idea isn't about civic technology, per se, as it is about being networked, and what that means for cities, civic engagement, and how governments work. This is the fundamental shift -- and it affects everything: how city governments work internally, how they relate to their technology vendors, how they treat the relationships between themselves and their constituents. This has been alternately described as "moving from being a problem solver to being a matchmaker", "stepping back and let other people lead", "moving from being a bureaucrat to being a concierge", moving from talker to listener (this applies to things like online conversations as well as data analytics), and moving from a paradigm of control to a paradigm of empowerment. I agree with all of that. I also made the point (and this relates to the first) that "using civic technology well" doesn't necessarily mean building anything new from scratch. Often, it means identifying where activity is already happening in the real world, and applying tech-enabled effort to amplify that activity. Good examples from our past work are the
...and told a story about a group of people who ended up stuck on a bus, in some city, in the middle of the night in a blizzard. Stranded, and far enough away from anything that they couldn't leave, the group got to talking. And apparently, the connections stuck and people remained friends afterwards (they may have done something awesome together too, but I don't remember, and it doesn't really matter). I think it's cool that a simple disruption like that can really change the way people connect with one another. I know from living in NYC that the best times were when something bizarre or messed up happens on the subway. It transforms a group of strangers into a group of kindred spirits; sharing a laugh, wink or smile (or perhaps something more severe like protecting someone -- though I've never been in a position like that -- with a group of strangers is really amazingly cool. And it happens in places like the NYC -- and particularly the subway -- all the time (which I've written about before). Anyway, so the link here is: I wonder what we can do to create more "virtual blizzards" -- little disruptions that create moments where we feel comfortable connecting with our neighbors and city-mates in unexpected, cool, and potentially powerful ways (ideally without threat of an exploding bus). // photo: jokeroo.com
a video of the talk is posted online (for instance, here are all the great talks from this year's Personal Democracy Forum).
This is a decent start, but it's way limiting. It's probably a safe guess that something like 10% of all presentations given on a daily basis are archived in a useful online format. And the online formats available now aren't actually all that useful. BUT - given where we are now with technology and the social web, there's an opportunity to fill this gap. My ideal tool would look like this: 1) Awesome, in-browser editing. In-browser editing is critical - when you're creating your content in-situ (see Fred's good post on this idea here), you can then share, edit, re-share, embed, etc., straight from there. The editing experience should feel great, just like Keynote does, and should ideally be implemented in HTML5, giving it a native in-browser feel (just like the beautiful Moqups). 2) Super easy audio recording. If I'm making a deck for a talk I'm giving somewhere, I'll gladly spend the extra time to do a run-through of audio recording for the online version (as I did with my talk at last week's awesome summit). 3) A handful (don't need a ton) of addons that are native to the web -- analytics, interactivity, embedding, etc. 4) Social - so you can get feedback, collaborate, connect with others, etc. 5) Interoperable - exports to keynote, powerpoint, pdf, youtube, etc. But what about Slideshare?, you might ask. Slideshare was the pioneer in the get-your-powerpoints-online space, but their approach is not web-native or in-situ. They have lots and lots of content, but it's basically crippled without voiceovers (and to a lesser extent, interactivity). They took a stab at it with slidecasts, but it was pretty half-hearted, and it's just plain cumbersome to do (record your own timed MP3 and upload). What about Prezi? Prezi is nice and can create some really beautiful things. I loved Sascha Meinrath's prezi from PdF. Prezi could be great -- downsides I see are that it's a radical paradigm shift with a steep learning curve (not that big a deal), and it still doesn't support audio as far as I can tell (correct me if I'm wrong). But we're getting warmer. What about Sliderocket? There is a reason why I'm calling out Sliderocket in the title of this post. It's because they are SO CLOSE, yet SO FAR AWAY. The vision for the Sliderocket product is wonderful, hitting most of what I outlined above, but the execution sorely misses the mark. Twice now, I've put real effort into switching from Keynote to Sliderocket -- against my own reservations about some of the issues I'll list out below -- and each time I gave up, before switching back again because it's exactly what I want. But in the end, after saying all of the below privately to their customer support team, I just got too frustrated and gave up. First, the good:
Online editor that decently approximates the keynote/powerpoint experience (with a few key downsides which I'll get to in a sec)
All kinds of interactivity built in -- surveys, popups, comments, etc.
Collaboration: both on the editing side (for teams) and the public side (comments etc)
Live embeds with analytics -- see who's watching, how long they're looking at each slide, etc. Awesome and amazing.
Easy sound recording.
So, you might say: wait a minute, they've done absolutely everything you've asked for! And you're right, they have. It's so awesome. Yes. Except: at every single turn, and whenever they have an opportunity, they make choose to make your life harder, not easier, and they make you hate the service, not love it. For example:
Crappy flash UI -- they've built out tons of features, but all using a really clunky flash UI that feels neither like the browser nor like the desktop. It's worse than the web, AND it's worse than the desktop. It just doesn't feel good to use -- it's just a little to slow, just a little too unresponsive. And things tend to break (like this).If that were the extent of it, I could handle it -- and I'd be a sliderocket convert, despite having to get used to a UI that's not as great as it could be. The real kicker, though, is that sliderocket focuses all their attention on a) locking you in and b) goosing you up to their pro plan. And they do it in the most frustrating and manipulative way. For example:
Every features seems like a feature, until you try to use it. Then you get an in-your-face upgrade pitch:
Like accessing analytics: Or even exporting: Really? I can't export to any format without a pro account? The first time I saw this, it was a total dealbreaker. Then, I ultimately came back, because I wanted in-situ, interactive, collaborative, social, in-brower slides. Even the idea that my slides would forever be locked inside the sliderocket platform unless I upgraded didn't permanently dissuade me (the first time) -- the potential for what's here is just so great. And, even if you agree with strategy of pushing all users into the pro account as quickly as possible (I don't), the way to do it is NOT to piss them off at every turn when they're trying to get something done. The way to do it is to make them love your product as it is, and then really really want that shiny thing that would make it SO MUCH BETTER but that you're not crippled without. So, if I were in the drivers seat at Sliderocket, I'd see this huge opportunity and I'd fix it as soon as possible. Because their engagement numbers can't be that good right now -- they can't expect to win over die-hard powerpoint or keynote users with their current lock-in strategy, and they can't expect to win over web geeks with their crappy flash UI (on top of that same lock-in strategy), If I were in charge of Sliderocket, I'd say: We have the opportunity to become the platform for communicating ideas. Like TED or TEDx, but for online slides. That means focusing on getting as many people as possible to love our platform as possible, and to build an amazing community of communicators around it. Specifically, that means:
Drop the hard sell for the pro account. Instead make the free account awesome and fun, and then get creative about other native monetization strategies. For example, look at what visual.ly is doing.
Re-build the UX without all the flash. See Moqups. Or if you still love flash, be more like myBalsamiq (which uses flash for the editor, but wraps it in a very nice HTML experience)
Make portability -- import and export -- a key selling point. You don't need to lock people in -- they will want to use your native features because they are so awesome (embedding, interactivity, audio, etc.). That will always be first choice. But they'll need to be able to dump to PDF, PPT, or Keynote at times too. And a proprietary player isn't enough.
I realize that I'm being preachy here. It's only because I think that there is such a need and an opportunity here, and you're so close.
who were already deeply engaged in this issue. When Uncivil went live, there were individuals in neighborhoods across NYC who were chomping at the bit to upload photos & issues to it, and it immediately took off (and ultimately led to
, once the agency finally came around to the idea. In both cases, there was a lot of existing demand, which helped make relatively simple tech interventions successful. Lastly, I'll include an idea presented by
who were already deeply engaged in this issue. When Uncivil went live, there were individuals in neighborhoods across NYC who were chomping at the bit to upload photos & issues to it, and it immediately took off (and ultimately led to
, once the agency finally came around to the idea. In both cases, there was a lot of existing demand, which helped make relatively simple tech interventions successful. Lastly, I'll include an idea presented by
