This has to be among the most interesting interviews I have done with anyone -- mainly because I was not interviewing just one person! This team of six comprises some of the most amazing folks I have interacted with -- together they take care of all the content that you will find on the PowerPoint section of the Office Online site at Microsoft.com.
Kudos to Mary Sobczyk for patiently coordinating with me on this -- and Shellie Tucker, Eric Schmidt, Joy Miller, Jen Zamora, and Eric Jensen -- you'll find them all pictured below.
In this exclusive Indezine interview, they discuss how they work as a team, and what factors influence the creation of new content for the PowerPoint part of the Office Online site.
The overall winner is Thirst, a presentation that brings alive the impending worldwide water shortage that's staring at mankind. Interestingly, this presentation was created by Jeff Brenman (pictured on the right) -- he also won the first prize in the last contest that SlideShare held. Indezine interviewed Jeff last year for his Shift Happens presentation.
Footnotes, a photo slide show that documents Melanie's journey through photos of her feet, won the second prize for its novel theme while the third prize was won by a presentation about the crisis in Zimbabwe.
The judges for this contest included Guy Kawasaki, who conceptualized this entire presentation contest concept -- other judges were Nancy Duarte, Garr Reynolds, and Bert Decker.
And here are some statistics: the contest this year attracted 2415 entries and 22,000 votes from voters in 130 countries. There are 3 overall winners, 6 category winners and 9 honorable mentions. The first, second and third prize winners will receive a MacBook Air, Amazon Kindle and iPod Nano respectively. Winners in each category will receive an iPod Touch.
Rashmi Sinha is cofounder and CEO of SlideShare, the world's largest community for sharing presentations. She manages design and business development at SlideShare. Previously, she founded Uzanto, a user experience software company, that worked with companies like eBay, iFilm, AAA and Blue Shield. She also lead the team that created MindCanvas, a rich online survey platform for customer research. Rashmi has a PhD in Cognitive Neuropsychology from Brown University. She did a PostDoc at UC Berkeley in Human Computer Interaction. She blogs at www.rashmisinha.com about social software and running a startup.
Rashmi: The idea of the contest came from Guy Kawasaki. We had toyed about with the idea of a contest earlier. I met Guy at a conference and he mentioned that he had always wanted to organize a PowerPoint contest. We continue talking and discussed several ideas before finalizing on the World's Best Presentation idea. It was Guy's idea to keep it general (not focused on any one topic) and not limit to slidecasts (slides + audio) which we considered at one point.
Geetesh: How is this contest being held in 2008 different from the previous one.
Rashmi: The 2008 contest is bigger - 1670 entries so far compared to 400 last week. Partly its simply because SlideShare has grown. But also, the results of the contest last year captured the imagination of many people and this year they have decided to participate as well.
Also, we were inspired by global contests and events like Oscars and Olympics. We really wanted a sense of scale (all the world participating), but we also wanted an openness that you can only have on the internet (anyone with a computer and internet connection can participate). PowerPoint is a people's medium. We wanted a people's contest.
Its really great to see that come alive as the contest captures the imagination of people the world over. We see slideshows from all across the world. We see blog posts and Twitters from all across the world. Its really quite cool.
Also, we have six category prizes this year that we did not have last year. Finally, we have participants form many more countries (it is truly an international contest).
Geetesh: Tell us about some entries that you find unconventional, strange, funny, or just different.
Rashmi: Here are some interesting ones this time in the contest; one interesting trend is that last time, the contest was the first time -- and so many of the entries were from the early adopters; this time the audience seems to be far more broad-based.
There's a bunch of presentations on green, environment etc. and they are all very popular (getting lots of votes)
Shawn Toh (pictured to the left) is based out of Singapore and loves to do advanced animation tricks using PowerPoint. He is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP (Most Valuable Professional) and runs the PPT Heaven site.
In this discussion, Shawn discusses the PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2008.
Geetesh: Tell us more about how you evolved PPTH eCon, and what it is?
Shawn:PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2008 is an annual online convention, which will be held this year on 27 September, a month after the PowerPoint Heaven anniversary date.
The eConvention starts off with the voting of the eCon Awards 2008: Animation / Artwork / Game / Broadcast of the Year, which involves works submitted on the PowerPoint Heaven site in the year 2008. The voting process is a pre-eCon event starting from September 1st to 26th. Winners will then be reflected on 27 September, along with Contributor of the Year, who will be interviewed with a list of questions given by the board members.
Any new PowerPoint works, demos, or trailers can also be submitted during the eCon period by anyone. Also, expect to see screenshots, demo and trailer of a upcoming RPG game in PowerPoint and a sophisticated 3D animations by Han Byul Jang (Zzangdol).
The eConvention was inspired by several of our existing board members, who suggested we have an event where all members on PPTH board can participate.
Geetesh: What is the motivation and objective of PPTH eCon, and who can participate?
Shawn: PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2008 is a day where PowerPointers get together to discuss, review and submit their latest PowerPoint works on PowerPoint Heaven. The purpose of this eConvention is to recognize our contributors for their hard work and efforts for the year and enable them to get together to discuss and keep each other updated on what they have been doing.
For the viewers, this is also a day where you can get to see wide variety of PowerPoint works created by the contributors.
Throughout the eConvention, participation and involvements from the Guests and PPTH board members are welcomed, where the discussion board will be the communication channel for discussions, feedback, suggestions, submissions and more.
You already learned how you can upload your presentations to SlideBoom -- but do you know that unless you enable the option, all downloads of the original PowerPoint presentation (PPT or PPTX) are disabled when you share the URL of your online presentation. Most of the time, you might be happy with this default behavior, but it is good to know that this can be changed on a presentation-to-presentation basis.
This and other similar options can be found within the Privacy options values within the Uploading your presentation screen within the SlideBoom site. If these options are only visible as a thin strip that you can see in Figure 1, click the downward pointing chevron to see all the options, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 1: The Privacy options strip shows you options
Figure 2: Click the chevron, and you can edit the privacy options.
Thereafter, click the Submit button, and you are done.
DesignScience announced that the new MathType version 6 for the Macintosh is now shipping. This is a major upgrade that adds support for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and Intel Macs, and Microsoft Office 2008. New features include TeX/LaTeX input, the ability to copy equations to and from Wikipedia, and more. MathType is the full-featured, professional version of the Equation Editor in Microsoft Office and many other products, and is used by math and science educators, engineers, research scientists, students and publishing professionals to include mathematical notation in printed documents, presentations and web pages.
Nancy Duarte has been a Principal of Duarte Design since 1990. Her firm is in the heart of the Silicon Valley and the client list is loaded with Fortune 500 companies. Her passion for business communications that are clear, meaningful and attractive has opened doors for her in a business world full of cluttered and complex visual communications.
In this interview, Nancy discusses her much awaited book slide:ology that was released this month. Nancy discusses how the book evolved, how she decided what makes it to the book, and more. She also discusses herself and the importance of stories in slides. And then talks about a scraped book cover!
The overall winner is Thirst, a presentation that brings alive the impending worldwide water shortage that's staring at mankind. Interestingly, this presentation was created by Jeff Brenman (pictured on the right) -- he also won the first prize in the last contest that SlideShare held. Indezine interviewed Jeff last year for his 
And at Indezine, we have something exclusive for you -- an interview with Rashmi Sinha (pictured to the left) of SlideShare. 
