I might be late to the party with this one but my boss introduced me to The Wainhouse Research Bulletin the other day and it seemed worth sharing.

The goal of The Wainhouse Research Bulletin (WRB) is to help vendors, reseller channel partners, service providers, investors, and end-users alike follow the fast moving action in the world of rich media communications. Wainhouse Research analysts cover presence, instant messaging, audio conferencing, web conferencing, videoconferencing, distance education, streaming media, and unified communications products and services. Via the WRB, we both report and give our unique perspectives on product announcements, financial results, and corporate developments as well as technology and market trends. The WRB is published approximately weekly via email.

There’s also an RSS syndication feed available.

Posted by Lee Potts at 9:13 PM .

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At today’s quarterly Webinar, the ICIA Presentations Council previewed their InfoComm 2005 Super Tuesday program for presentation professionals. It looks like it going to be an extremely useful set of sessions covering technology, design, coaching and business strategy.

Please don’t take my word for it. You can see for yourself as they have been kind enough to provide a link to an archived version of the webinar for Visual Being readers. Although the webinars themselves are open to the general public, access to the full archives is one of the benefits of membership in the Council.

Posted by Lee Potts at 8:31 PM .

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I have long observed the growth of the event planning industry and wondered how I might fit my skills as a technologist specializing in presentations into it. Today’s Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on an awards show dedicated only to event planners. Several of the big winners were in the corporate arena. I am wondering whether any presentation pros have managed to make their expertise available successfully to this industry.

I am sure that the AV people among you have mined this mother lode. But I am wondering more from a technology/presentation area if anyone has been successful, and if so, how they did it and what specifically they were able to offer. Thanks.

Posted by Tom Bunzel at 1:24 PM .

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Now it can be told and revealed. Check my story on InformIT for the full details of Microsoft PowerPoint Secedes from MS Office. Suffice it to say that this is huge, HUGE, HUGE — only my sources in the PowerPoint community let me reveal the sordid underbelly of what has been festering in Redmond. Here’s a hint — check the package of the next version of Office and guess what WON’T be there. Read it all now! (It’s all there with the full final slide show from the PowerPoint team).

Posted by Tom Bunzel at 5:05 PM .

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Talk about fish out of water – I am a regular attendee at a show in L.A. called Digital Hollywood. Most of those present, including press, are looking for answers or solutions to digital delivery at the very high end of the broadcast/film and music spectrum.

There are panels on HD formats, new DVD formats, music distributions strategies, online games, and so on. So what’s a guy who teaches Microsoft Office and PowerPoint presentations to glean from all this?

One thing that struck me is the overused word “convergence”. A colleague Bob Befus of Presentations Strategies in Durham, North Carolina (a firm that specializes as a one stop shop for high end corporate events and provides solutions from AV to internet broadcast and conferencing) has spoken of the convergence between AV (audio-visual expertise) and IT (the realm of information technology professionals).

Well at Digital Hollywood, where technology used to be a dirty word along with the word “digital” in the entertainment industry, IT professionals are now among the attendees. I spent some time talking with Vice President at Universal Music group who is an ex-musician who became a computer programmer and now runs IT for the music division of the studio.

He was telling me a bit about how he and his colleagues had finally succeeded in having the entire music industry (including Apple’s iTunes) adopt a new standard for meta-language to tag and identify musical tracks.

To an Office user this is sort of like having the entire computer and PDA industry adopt one standard database format for contacts and calendars so that any snippet of contact or appointment information can be understood by any device or program, including Outlook. Kind of a far fetched dream for technologists (until the advent of XML), but in the entertainment industry, where things have to work out of the box the compelling aspect of consumer demand made this standard happen. (It only took three years to adopt).

Perhaps more interesting from a presentation standpoint was the presence of a broadcasting company with a product that really may belong at InfoComm.
Continental Vista Broadcasting offers a suite of products that enable anyone to broadcast interactive video on the web with additional features like chat, polling, advertising – using features they call “Talk2Event, Talk2Advertiser, chat rooms, forums, polls, surveys, real-time tickers, live statistics, an emotion meter, an interactive advertising window, contests, auctions, online donation acceptance, and e-commerce.”

In some ways this reminded me of the MediaSite product from Sonic Foundry, except that it provides a similar set of services from the perspective of a broadcaster rather than a technology company. But the results are the same – viewers can actively participate in a broadcast.

Why can’t this broadcast just as easily be a corporate presentation rather than what is commonly considered entertainment? In fact one of Continental Vista’s niches is what they call academic and corporate education. The demo is a fully branded interactive broadcasting portal for a client (LexiPoint) which offers premium on-demand seminars.

Now there is no reason why such a set of content offerings could not just as easily supplement or convey real time meetings for a pharmaceutical company or provide training seminars for an automobile manufacturer.

Not surprisingly Continental Vista’s product is a proprietary media player that incorporates technology that uses standard Flash MX-based files along with any other standard video format as input.

Got PowerPoint – use one of the many PowerPoint to Flash converters or output key slides as bitmap images.

I know what you’re thinking – how much does this cost? Like anything marketed in the entertainment industry “it depends”. But among Continental Vista’s clients are some academic and religious institutions that suggest that pricing models can be compatible for high end presentation projects.

How does this translate into marketing for presentation professionals? Here’s a suggestion – instead of saying to a client that you will provide them with AV and presentation services for their event, you tell them that instead you will provide the with a network for online and on demand broadcast of their content, which will include full interactivity, polling and chat.

The results are essentially the same, with the same features currently contemplated by any event planning unit. But for the recipient or viewer they don’t think of it as technology (and complex) but they see it as TV broadcast online. And for the client I would suggest the prestige of being a “broadcaster” greatly trumps the cachet of being a presenter.

Instead of being Professor PowerPoint you are now Ted Turner. (A legend in your own mind, which is a good way to position a client).

Posted by Tom Bunzel at 4:13 PM .

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Here’s a really great blog about the hardware side of the AV industry by the consultant Gary Kayye. Lots of insider news and commentary.

Do you know a "Randy AV"?

Posted by Lee Potts at 3:19 PM .

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