A comment by Bob Befus at the conclusion of the recent Webinar got me into Podcasts (he mentioned the term and I was unfamiliar with them).
When I first researched the topic I figured “big deal” (which is common for me) — anyone can convert an audio file to an MP3 and call it a podcast. But no, that’s not quite right.
It turns out that just like newsreaders proliferated a while back, podcast readers are widespread and allow users to subscribe to feeds from true RSS podcasts, thereby bypasssing email (spam filters) and reaching listeners who opt in to their content.
I thought about this from a presenter’s perspective and figured that if I were to do a conference I would use MediaSite or a similar tool to archive the full conference as Bob has often suggested and done with the Webinars.
But then I would try to entice my participants (or those who could not attend) to point their podcast readers to a feed from my broadcast to be able to transfer the audio portion (in MP3 or WMA format) to their portable devices to be able to listen to it at their leisure – while driving, exercising or goofing off.
I looked into podcast readers for Windows and found BlogMatrix on CNET and downloaded the client. Within an hour I had subscribed to podcasts and recorded my own.
Then I thought, how would I get my content out of PowerPoint? I intend to write this up for my InformIT column in time for InfoComm but briefly if you enable narration under Slide Show, you can link your narration files to a local folder and they are saved in WAV format.
Subsequently you can import them into a tool like BlogMatrix Sparks 2.0 which will convert them to MP3 (and even allow you to mix and edit them) and post them on an RSS feed site (BlogMatrix currently offers this service for free for a month so check it out – I own no stock in the co… yet).
The other scenario I tried for longer presentations was to use Camtasia Studio 2.0 to capture the entire powerpoint slide show as an AVI file. In the Camtasia Editor, it’s easy to save just the audio (WAV) file, and again use the BlogMatrix tool to podcast it.
I think this is an interesting scenario for those who might want to podcast their powerpoint and thereby offer their clients the most cutting edge media output options.
I would be glad to share this process with you and what else has come out from it at InfoComm.
Posted by Tom Bunzel in InfoComm 2005, PowerPoint, Presentation Design, Software, Techniques, Technology