We need Twitter and IRC integration for PowerPoint

A recent story on CNN talks about the real-time backchatter that is often happening at conferences and presentations. While the panelists are up on stage talking, the audience is having their own conversation on Twitter, Meebo and in chat rooms. I was in the crowd at Mark Zuckerberg's notorious SXSW interview this year which was probably one of the highest profile examples so far.

I was impressed to read how Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester was able to use this to his advantage and change the course of his presentation mid-stream based on feedback over Twitter. Smart presenters are going to pay attention and smart entrepreneurs will find ways to turn this into an advantage.

At some of the geekiest conferences that I attend, they have put up an IRC chat window on a projector so that participants inside the room and outside the room could interact.

We're now starting to see a new generation of web 2.0 presentation software from companies like SlideRocket and Google - where the slides can incorporate real-time data from the web, video, flash and other interactive components. But this is all focused outward on what the viewers see.

PowerPoint or Keynote show a presenter view if you have 2 monitors in use that includes the current slide, next slide, time elapsed, time remaining, current time and your slide notes. A great opportunity for this new generation is to provide a real-time presenter view that brings in this other real-time information. So in addition to the slide notes and timers, there would a twitter feed, Meebo client and IRC client so that each presenter can monitor the online audience in addition to the one sitting in front of them.

Comments

[Byron Van Arsdale]

Pre-powerpoint, experienced presenters engaged participants in a discussion before, during, and after the presentation to get feedback. With powerpoint, the focus shifted from what the participants wanted or needed to "how cool can I make the slides look". Additionally, the deck was designed in advance and was static relative to the order of the slides.

What I'd like to see added is a function that allowed a presenter, on the fly, to switch slides near instantly.

The introduction of Twitter, etc. to get live feedback is cool for tech savvy audiences yet will be a potential nightmare for the less than tech savvy. It is connection with the audience by focusing your attention on their questions, challenges, issues, etc. that will make or break ANY presentation regardless of the level of tech being used.

Thanks Josh for the post - I'll be linking to this for a post in my blog.

Byron
PowerConferenceCalls.com

[Joshua Baer]

Also make sure there are multiple presenter views, so that when there are 5 people on a panel they could each have a personalized dashboard open. It probably would make sense to add scratchpad where they could take notes too (lots of stuff on one screen!)

[Mitch]

That's actually a pretty cool idea and I wish I'd thought of it first! We are planning to do integrate polls so you can gather feedback from embedded presentations,etc. but I love the idea of gathering real-time feedback from the crowd.

Consider it added to the SlideRocket roadmap.

thanks!

Mitch
SlideRocket