Inspired by the ScreencastCamp held at TechSmith’s headquarters in Michigan each summer, Anton Bollen, TechSmith’s European Evangelist and author of the German TechSmith Blog, and Andreas Pilz, a Camtasia trainer and professional screencaster, organized TechSmith’s first international ScreencastCamp in Nürnberg, Germany.

Background

Barcamps and Themecamps have become increasingly popular in Germany.  In fact, there are over 80 events in the country each year! Known for their unique format, Barcamps and Themecamps provide a fun, collaborative environment for attendees to learn and share information about a specific topic they are passionate about. Instead of having scheduled sessions and a clearly outlined agenda, attendees use a whiteboard to plan and present sessions and workshops as the day progresses. Since ScreencastCamp follows the same loosely structured or “unconference” format of a Barcamp or Themecamp, hosting one in Germany was a natural fit. The goal of any ScreencastCamp is to provide the screencasting community with an opportunity to get together and to learn from and with each other. It’s an event where you can meet other screencasters, exchange knowledge and receive qualified feedback.

The Event

Held March 23-24, ScreencastCamp Germany took place at the Klee-Center, a modern co-working space and conference center located in the heart of Nürnberg. The two-day event brought together a total of 16 attendees who came from all across Germany to learn more about screencasting.

Rather than having parallel sessions as is common at larger Barcamps, the attendees decided to only have one presentation at a time. This kept all the knowledge and experience in one room and allowed everybody to contribute to each session. This generated a lot of great conversations and discussions that everybody benefited from.

Here’s a list of all the great individual sessions:

• Introduction to Screencasting
• How I approach professional marketing screencast – From my customer’s vision all the way to production.
• Greenscreen Effect: What can it do for your screencasts?
• Videofeedback Sessions: Participants showed off their screencasts and everybody provided constructive feedback.
• What video and image resources are available to you spice up your screencasts?
• Storyboarding & Scriptwriting Discussion
• Basic editing workflow in Camtasia and how to build some sweet effects
• Where can I host my videos and how can I monetize them?
• Video SEO, YouTube, Views, Tagging & Co

Which one of these sessions would you like to see again at the next ScreencastCamp?

Speaking of which…

Future Events

Interested in participating in our next ScreencastCamp? Please sign up to join us August 2-4, 2013 at TechSmith headquarters in Okemos, Michigan!

We look forward to planning another ScreencastCamp Germany in 2014 and hope to host ScreencastCamps at other international locations as well. Get in touch if you want to organize one.

And that’s that. Auf Wiedersehen!

The post A report from ScreencastCamp Germany appeared first on TechSmith Blogs.

Before we knew about these techniques, we would often spend countless hours tweaking each graphic, at each size, then saving each out separately, and finally naming them over and over… We tried using Photoshop Actions to minimize work as much as possible, but there was still a massive amount of repetition. We had accepted this as unavoidable grunt work of mobile design; the price of designing beautiful user interfaces. But there is a better way…

Four amazing tools have completely changed our workflow and cut out a massive amount of effort and we want to share them with you.

Slicy

When we first learned about Slicy, we knew it was going to change our lives forever. Simply put, Slicy lets you name your layer groups for rapid saving of graphics assets (e.g. you could name a layer group RecordButton@2x.png). Once the layers are named, you can drag your PSD into Slicy and it automatically pops out PNGs. If you put the @2x suffix on your filename, it will even scale down your assets automatically and save non-retina size.

Name your folders and create layer masks (raster or vector) in order to determine the size of your images. These named folders will save out both normal and retina versions.

But… Be Careful with Sizing

To make the most out of Slicy when saving iOS graphics, it’s vital to make sure you are creating all of your retina graphics to snap on even numbered pixel boundaries. Doing so will ensure that you create pixel perfect, crisp non-retina graphics when Slicy scales your retina graphics down by 50%. See the diagram below:

Remember, use an even number pixel grid, always! Or you’ll blurrify your beautiful graphics!

Sometimes you may have to create custom non-retina graphics, if you want all of your icons to be perfect for the iPad mini or older iPads/iPhones (such as structural or sizing changes on a small icon). However, on the whole, using Slicy with a disciplined approach to graphics sizing will reduce your non-retina asset creation to an enormous extent.

Slicy, saving ALL OF THE THINGS

Teehan+Lax Density Converter

With the automatic scaling for non-retina graphics, Slicy has a definite bias towards iOS asset saving. It does not have a similar feature for scaling and saving at various Android resolutions. However, scaling isn’t nearly as easy for Android assets. While iOS has a simple 200% scale for retina graphics, Android uses 150% for HDPI and 225% for XHDPI. This means graphics often need to be tweaked to ensure pixel perfection.

In order to help with those plentiful calculations, we’ve come to rely on the oh so handy Density Converter by Teehan+Lax. Not only do they give the clearest explanation of device densities and how that applies to graphics creation, they also give you a converter for calculating sizes. With the converter on this page, you can avoid having to do excessive manual calculations. Just punch in your numbers and it will tell you what sizes you need for your assets!

Mastermolds

The third technique is one we developed, which we lovingly refer to as mastermolds. A mastermold is a large PSD file with spaces for an HDPI Android mockup, an iOS retina mockup and an XHDPI Android mockup. Within each of these spaces, we create art assets as well as mockups, for each screen throughout an app. By naming the layer groups for android assets, we can then use Slicy in conjunction with the mastermolds to automatically export ALL of our graphics assets at once. We just name each layer group according to resolution, IE: hdpi_record_button.png or xhdpi_record_button.png.

A blank mastermold template

However, it’s important to note that when working with gigantic PSD files such as these, Photoshop can start to get pretty bogged down and slow. To counteract this, you can take layers that you are no longer working on and convert them into smart objects. Using smart objects instead of tons of shape layers with effects will greatly improve overall Photoshop performance.

A mastermold of the Coach’s Eye 3.0 Video Library. A side benefit to designing within a mastermold is that we have a view of what our app will look like across both iOS and Android. This helps us ensure that the app has a familiar look and feel across all devices - while still making platform specific design decisions where appropriate.

Automator

So now we have mastermold PSDs full of art assets for both iOS and Android, but once we use Slicy to save them out we end up with a folder that has a ton of graphics assets. On iOS, taking care of the graphics is fairly simple – just drag them where they go for the developers to get to them. But because we put prefixes in front of each Android asset, we also need to delete those prefixes and move the graphics into the appropriate folders for each resolution. To make this a less monotonous task, we create Automator scripts to automatically strip the files of their prefixes and move them to appropriate folders. For more details on how to setup the scripts, check out this screencast:

Can’t see the video? Watch here.

Overview

With these new techniques, we can design pixel perfect graphics for each platform faster than ever before. We can iterate on our designs more rapidly and, with our new found time savings, put more effort into refining our designs and exploring more options.

We’re still learning, however. Our hope was that by sharing what we’ve learned with the design community at large, we could also learn from other people in the space and pick up more tricks. If you have a suggestion on how we could improve our workflow even more, please let us know in the comments! You can also reach out to us on Twitter @TechSmithDesign

The post Mobile Design: Painless Pixel Perfection appeared first on TechSmith Blogs.

Can’t see the video? Watch it on YouTube.

An Interview with Matt Pierce

Who are you, and what do you do?
I’m Matt Pierce. I am the Customer Engagement Manager. I manage our Training and Documentation team, oversee Technical Support, and host the Forge. I try to be a good visual communicator and an advocate of using visuals to communicate better. When I’m not doing those things I am a husband and a dad to four awesome kids.

What’s your favorite thing about your job?
I work in sort of a fantasy land. I come to work and I have fun every day. We work hard, we play hard… we push each other to do great things. Not only that, but I get to try things that I really never thought I would do. How many people go to work, create their own web show, and then get to talk to amazing guests and learn at their feet? Then on top of that, I get to work with brilliant (that’s right, I’m pulling out the big word guns) individuals. The individuals I work with have a huge capacity and are always coming up with great ideas, and then figure out how to make them happen.

What are your long term goals with The Forge? Where do you see it going in the future?
The Forge really started out of professional development time, so it’s sort of always been a side project that moved into having a fixed rotation in the work that I do. I think my long-term plan is to continue to grow the viewership so that we can keep spreading the message about visual communication and how screencasting and screenshots (not to mention tools like Ask3 and Coach’s Eye) can enhance most individuals’ ability to communicate. I’d love to see us continue to speak with interesting individuals. I think there are a lot of great stories to tell, and I’d like to see us tell more of them. I also want to see the Forge provide more information about tools that might help the audience be more successful. For instance, cameras, microphones, different software, and really other tools all have a place in a communicator’s tool box — but which ones are really good to use? Which ones help meet some need or goal? I think there’s room for us to continue to hone the content and get into a more digestible state for people on the go. Really, we’ve got lots to do.

If you could have any guest on the show, who would it be?
I have been lucky enough to have some great guests, especially recently, like Dan Roam and Dave Gray. If you’d told me a year ago that I would be chatting with these guys, I would’ve definitely been skeptical.

If I get to be audacious and talk with anyone I would pick more than one. Sal Khan could be super interesting. He’s a gentleman who is lighting a bit of a fire under education and educators, and what he’s doing isn’t necessarily that difficult to recreate – but it’s visual and the way it keeps moving forward seems revolutionary.

I’d also love to chat with Joss Whedon, who wrote and directed Avengers, Dr. Horrible, and a slew of other movies and TV shows. Why him? He’s written so many amazing things and he knows how to visually tell a story.

What tools or software do you use most in your day to day operations?
I spend a lot of my day in email (Outlook on Mac) and in FireFox or Chrome. I use Snagit on Mac just about every day, and I do something with Camtasia for Mac at least one or two times a week. Other software that keep popping up include Evernote. I have been playing with Adobe Premiere. I also have been testing out a GoPro Hero 3 Black edition camera that can shoot 60 and even 120 frames per second (FPS) so you get some sweet slow motion.

And above all, I use my notebook, white pieces of paper, and sticky notes daily to draw things out and better understand them visually.

The post Employee Highlight: Meet TechSmithie Matt Pierce appeared first on TechSmith Blogs.

You might be a subscriber to our blogs, interact with us on Twitter, and/or check out our Facebook pages every once in a while… but you’re still wondering, who are the people behind all this social media magic, and what’s in it for me? Well, you’re in for a treat.

Who are we?

Renee (@badrar)

I am the Online Community Specialist at TechSmith. I serve as a TechSmith champion to maintain, grow, and work with a variety of communities who are engaged with TechSmith products and services online.

Q) If you could trade jobs with anyone at TechSmith, who would it be?
I would trade jobs with one of our Evangelists because I would love to travel more and interact/meet face to face with our customers.

Q) What’s your favorite social media disaster of the year?
My favorite social media disaster this year so far is definitely the Applebee’s snafu. We are lucky that there are other companies who sometimes handle situations so badly because our team always shares these stories and tries to learn from them!

In 2012, my fave was this one during a presidential debate:
@KitchenAidUSA: “Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president!”
KitchenAid said: ”It was carelessly sent in error by a member of our Twitter team who, needless to say, won’t be tweeting for us anymore.”

Yikes. Who thought that was OK to say?!

Daniel (@fosteronomo)

I’m currently heading up the social media strategy for TechSmith. I help TechSmith scale up to get more employees involved, with better tools and processes, to delight and learn from more customers.

Q) Do you tweet your kids to wake them up in the morning?
They’re not on Twitter (yet!) but that is a superb idea. Maybe I could use IFTTT to hook up Twitter to the lights in their room! I did introduce them to the super fun app Maily, which they now use to send picture messages to everyone in the extended family! Like this one from my 8-year-old daughter (click for larger image):

Q) How many unread emails did you have this morning when you came in?
Hmmm, there are 1912 total unread in my inbox of 7968 items…but I think not more than a hundred of those were from over the weekend. I like to think of email as a stream that you dip into on occasion to fish out the important stuff.

Jessie (@JessieLaHaie)

I am the Online Community Specialist for the Education Team. I focus my social media efforts on our education customers and how we can best serve them with our products and services.

Q) So your husband also works at TechSmith… are your children named Camtasia and Snagit?
No… but that would have been fitting seeing how we also met here! Their names are Raven and Luna. We have to have a third whose name will be Tic. Then our lives will be complete.

Q) If you could destroy any one website on the internet, which one would it be?
If I could destroy one website on the internet, it would be The Ashton-Drake Online Monkey Gallery because they created THIS.

Logan

I am the Technical Support Specialist – Social Channels. I help our customers with troubleshooting for our products and services, and offer tips for a more efficient work flow via our social channels.

Q) If you could have dinner with any one person, who would it be?
Ayn Rand. Opinionated broad. Don’t agree with everything she wrote, but she got me thinking in a whole different way.

Q) What’s your favorite internet meme?
I think the Drew Carey ones from Whose Line Is It Anyway are hilarious. Like this one:

Shooka (@ShookaRafizadeh)

I am the Social Media Intern here at TechSmith. I write/edit for the blogs, monitor the socials, and make Daniel, Renee, and Jessie coffee every morning (kidding… that would suck.)

Q) You’ve just been given a skeleton key to Twitter. Who’s account would you hack?
Grumpy cat. Easy question. Actually… maybe Kim Kardashian. Only to delete it and somehow permanently disallow her from ever having a Twitter again.

Q) If you could be any cat in the world, which cat would you be?
This one (click for larger image):

Mostly because she’s wearing a skull collar. And because she’s obviously catching up on her favorite blogs here.

Kaitlin (@WhiskKid)

I am the newest (since only 2 weeks ago!) Social Media Intern at TechSmith. So far I’ve written and edited for the blogs, and have helped with preparation for trade shows.

Q) Let’s just get this one out of the way… so you were on Martha Stewart a few years back for your infamous Rainbow Cake. What was the most awkward part of your experience there?
Despite being awesome and still unbelievable, the WHOLE experience of being on The Martha Stewart show was completely awkward. I was a really shy and self-conscious freshman, so being in front of everyone was socially debilitating to some degree. I’m still surprised that I was even able to articulate my thoughts on camera!

Fortunately, I don’t think I put my foot in my mouth too many times. Regardless, it was a really good learning experience!

Q) What’s your spirit animal?
After much consideration, I have decided that my spirit animal is Lenny Pepperbottom. It’s pretty neat.

So what’s in it for you?

As the social media team, we create all sorts of content and deliver them to you via a variety of sources. So what’s in it for you? A fat daily serving of tips and tricks for our products, customer stories, updates on events, giggles, high fives, and more—conveniently delivered straight to your computer screen.

Though there are countless (awesome) contributors to our social efforts, we like to think of ourselves as the extra mouth, hands, and ears of TechSmith: we deliver useful and relevant content to our customers; we lend a hand when a customer is stuck and needs help; and most importantly, we listen to what you, our customers, have to say about us and improve our services accordingly. Click on the below post for more specific information on how you can best connect with us:

Help us improve

As mentioned before, a large part of what we do is listen to our customers for feedback on how we can do things better around here. So as you look through the blogs, interact with us on Twitter, check out our Facebook pages, and more, keep an eye out and let us know what we can improve to better serve you.

Stay social!

-TechSmith Social Media Team

The post Introducing the TechSmith Social Media Team appeared first on TechSmith Blogs.

Who are you, and what do you do?
My name is Katie Moore and I’m a senior marketing manager here at TechSmith. My role consists of managing the Social Media Team, part of our Evangelism Team, our Customer Content Coordinator and Email Marketing Programs Team. In addition to providing support and guidance to my team, I also have a close working relationship with the marketing management team. We work together to discuss and provide feedback on our overarching marketing strategies including things like product release strategy, market priorities and strategy, and helping our teams meet their goals.

Can you tell us a little about your day to day job functions?
My day to day changes a lot depending on what the focus is for TechSmith, however most days you can count on finding me at my desk watching awesome customer videos, in the kitchen eating the multitude of amazing baked goods that our Social Media intern brings in, or helping to create the next YouTube sensation video. I also find myself in a lot of different types of meetings like one-on-ones with my direct reports, management training, and team updates. Staff development and training is really important to TechSmith so we spend a lot of time focusing on that. I’m also currently understaffed in one area (we’re hiring!) so I’m doing a lot of customer interactions to pick up the slack there which I’m really enjoying.

How did you hear about TechSmith? How long have you been working here?
I moved to the mid-michigan area in 2005 so that my husband could pursue his doctoral degree at MSU. I found TechSmith through a job posting on monster.com and have loved working here ever since! I started in sales and eventually found my way over to marketing. I’ve been here for 7.5 years.

What do you like most about working at TechSmith?
The people. And when I say the people I mean both my amazingly funny, super smart co-workers and our customers who are out there changing people’s lives in big and small ways, every day. Sounds awfully cheesy in writing but I mean every word.

What has been the most interesting thing you’ve seen or done here at TechSmith?
Definitely looking out my office window and seeing a “sword fight” on blown up dinosaurs. Or maybe it was the time I stayed up all night and helped to video blog 24 videos in 24 hours. Things got really silly toward the wee hours of the morning! In all seriousness, I guess I would say both participating in and observing the growth of a “small” tech company in my 7+ years here. When I started we had just under 100 employees and three products in our portfolio. Now we have around 250 employees and on any given day 12 or more products or new initiatives that we’re focused on. It’s been an amazing ride thus far.

What tools or software do you use most in your day to day operations?
Outlook, Snagit, Evernote, Google Analytics, Skype, Google Docs, Sprout Social, Pandora and the ice cream scoop in the kitchen.

What do you hope to work on eventually?
One of the most rewarding parts of my “job” as a manager is helping both employees and teams grow by taking on new responsibility and making a name/place for themselves in the organization and in their career. Anything that helps me continue to do that is something I want to be a part of. Also, our industry (tech) is at the tipping point for big change in how we all do what we do. I’m referencing the movement to mobile and cloud and shift in business models that go along with them. I’m eager to see how everyone adapts to that change and continues to meet the expectations of the ever demanding marketplace.

Where is your favorite vacation spot?
I love visiting different places as much as possible but the one place I go back to time and time again is Acadia National Park in Maine. It might be because of the large quantities of seafood I consume while there, but the beauty of that park amazes me each and every time I go.

Photo Credit: Lindsay Wilkinson Photography

Anything else you want to share?
I’m a mom, I love to cook, play with my kids (my son, my dog and husband), enjoy triathlons, and miss my family who are spread out all over the country.

Want to learn more about the people who work at TechSmith and make the magic happen? Follow us @techsmithies!

The post Employee Highlight: Meet TechSmithie Katie Moore appeared first on TechSmith Blogs.

Have you been keeping up with the recent internet meme sensation, Harlem Shake videos? We have been. And not only that, we created our own (scroll down to see them)!

Then we made a guide showing how to make your own Harlem Shake video with Camtasia, because we’re not so good at keeping secrets. The steps reference Camtasia for Mac, but the process is really similar on Camtasia Studio. And if you don’t already own Camtasia, don’t worry, you can use the free trial to create a Harlem Shake video, too. Enjoy!

How to make a Harlem Shake video

To begin making your video, you need to gather your media. This includes the song Harlem Shake by Baauer and your video clips.

Step 1: You need to import your media into Camtasia for Mac. Right click on left side of the screen and select “Import Media”. Then select your audio and video clips.

Step 2: Drag the audio and first video clip to the timeline.

Step 3: You will want to remove the original audio from the video clip.

Step 4: Trim any excess video footage at the beginning of the clip and move the video to the beginning of the timeline.

Step 5: Drop in the crazy fun clip onto the timeline and remove the original audio as you did with the last video clip.

Step 6: You will want to align your “Fun” clip to the part of audio that says “Harlem Shake”. This is around 15 seconds.

Step 7: Trim off excess video and audio you are not using.

Step 8: Move your playhead to around 28 seconds. Split the “Fun” video at the playhead.

Step 8: Right click on right video segment and select “Add Clip Speed”.

Step 9: Drag out the Clip Speed to the right to slow down the clip. Around 40% worked for us.

Step 10: Trim all excess video and audio and then share to it the world!

And here she is… the final product. Ladies and gentlemen, the Harlem Shake (TechSmith Edition):

Can’t see the video? Watch it on YouTube.

And our executives and managers responded with the video below. Turns out, they like to shake it too:

Can’t see the video? Watch it on YouTube.

The post How to Make a Harlem Shake Video with Camtasia for Mac appeared first on TechSmith Blogs.

I call it Snagit or Camtasia Envy… Once one person in your office gets a hold of our software, it starts to spread faster than a grumpy cat picture. While it’s easy to hop on our website to get a single user license whenever you need it, did you know you could be missing out on some significant cost and time savings for your organization? When you get to the Enterprise level (100 Snagit or 25 Camtasia), you could be looking at a 50%-95% cost savings per license! Being able to package a master key and customize the installation tends to make the IT folks happy, while reducing the number of purchase orders or reimbursement checks – which will make your Purchasing folks smile.

Here’s how a typical call goes… “We love <insert favorite product here> and we’d like to roll it out to more users, but it’s getting hard to manage all of these keys and transactions!”

Have no fear, our Enterprise Account Team is here!

(from left) Sam Curcuruto (academic), Jamey Huffman, Kelly Schmerer, Lisa Ashbay-Singh, Matt Dennis and Haley Carwile (academic).

The team can help you do the following:

• Identify just how many licenses you already have within your organization.
• Understand our Enterprise Licensing options and help you pitch them to your stakeholders.
• Discover new uses and justify making TechSmith part of your standard computer software install.
• Upgrade and consolidate existing licenses to one key and one agreement.
• Act as a liaison between you and your reseller.
• Get you into the best possible pricing and licensing based on your organization’s needs.
• Become your main point of contact going forward for all things TechSmith.

Enterprise Licensing Options

These licenses typically start at 100 Snagit or 25 Camtasia Studio. Below are the standard options:

• Transactional- The more you buy, the more you save! Discounts are based on the total number of licenses per order.
• Cumulative- By putting all of your licenses under a Maintenance Agreement you can add to that Agreement at any time, in any quantity. You would receive pricing based on the total number of licenses under your agreement.
• True Up- Deploy licenses as needed and only place an order once a year. You will then report deployment numbers to TechSmith once a year. At time of True Up, you pay for new deployment and renew maintenance on the entire install base for the following year.
• Site- Pay one flat fee for a range of users. We’ll work with you to determine a deployment cap that gives you a cushion for growth.
• FTE- currently only available for Academic Institutions on a 3-year subscription basis. We’ll work with on a flat fee to cover all faculty, staff and students on your entire campus.
• Don’t see what you need? Call us, we’re happy to entertain other options!

We know that you save time and money using our software, so why should licensing and purchasing be any different? Contact us to see what we can do for your organization!

Jamey Huffman has been at TechSmith for 6 years, starting as an Inside Sales Specialist and eventually joining the Enterprise Account Team. She is now the Team Leader for Enterprise Sales and recently took on the challenge of managing Sales Interns. Jamey lives in Elsie, MI (where there are more dairy cows than humans) with her husband of 7 years and 1 year old daughter. When she is not at TechSmith you’ll find her at the barn prepping her 4 year old Quarter Horse filly for National Reining Horse Association competitions. You can catch her on Twitter @JustSayWhoa.

The post Meet our Enterprise Account Team appeared first on TechSmith Blogs.

Contest Winners

Congratulations to @katewilsonAK and @Matt_DayII for winning our New Year’s Resolutions contest! We will be in touch with you shortly about claiming your TechSmith swag prizes.

Back Story

Back in early December (or should I say, last year…) we asked you what you resolve to do in 2013 and you responded with tweets, images, videos, and more. We put together a fun video of the submissions to ring in the new year:

Can’t see the video? Watch it on YouTube.

We’re curious to know how your resolutions are going! Keep us updated by tweeting us @TechSmith (hash tag: #tscresolves) or leave a comment below.

The post In 2013 I resolve to… (pt. 2) appeared first on TechSmith Blogs.

The Inside Sales Department at TechSmith has a special team dedicated to the German speaking DACH (Deutschland, Austria & Switzerland) region. We also have a German website and translate our products into the German language. I recently caught up with our DACH team and asked them a few questions about the support they provide and also asked them to provide a personal bio.

♦What languages does the DACH Sales team support?
German and English

♦When was the DACH Sales team created?
Daniela joined the TechSmith Inside Sales team in November 2008 with a focus on German-speaking customers. In 2010 she began working only with DACH customers and resellers and began to manage DACH marketing activities. In October 2012, Amanda joined the team as an additional Inside Sales Specialist hired to assist German speaking customers. Additionally, we have a European evangelist, Anton Bollen, who resides in Berlin. Anton maintains our German blog and Twitter @TechSmith_De

♦What customer questions do you answer most often?
The team answers inquiries from both individual customers and companies who have sales and customer service questions. We also support our channel partners. We create price quotes, take orders and assist customers however they need us.

♦How can you be contacted?
We can be contacted via the German Sales contact form, the technical support system, or via email or phone. Please view our German contact page for details.

Meet the team

DANIELA MAURER, SALES & MARKETING COORDINATOR FOR DACH

Daniela Maurer

♦What languages do you speak?
I speak German (native), English, French and a little bit of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Sign Language.

♦Where did you grow up?
I grew up in a small town called Egliswil in the German-speaking part of Switzerland.

♦What countries have you visited?
For the most part, I have lived in Switzerland and Michigan. But I also spent a summer on the Algarve Coast in Portugal. I love to travel so I have been to: Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Denmark, Cyprus, Bulgaria, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Mexico, and Canada.

♦Where did you go to school?
I went to the Alte Kantonsschule in Aarau (that is where Albert Einstein went as well!), then I got my Associate´s Degree in Travel and Tourism from LCC and afterwards my Bachelor Degree in Management and International Business from Northwood University.

♦What TechSmith product do you use the most?
I use Jing a lot both at home and work. I love that with Jing you can create short screencasts to help out customers. Instead of typing a long email, a short screencast is often much easier and customers love it.

Amanda Dalaba, German Inside Sales Specialist

Amanda Dalaba

♦What languages do you speak?
English and German, currently working on Portuguese

♦Where did you grow up?
I was born in Kalamazoo, MI but then lived in Germany from age 3-7. After that I moved to the Lansing, MI area, where I’ve been ever since!

♦What countries have you visited or lived in?
Lived in: USA and Germany
Visited: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Italy, Vatican City, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, England, Ireland, Mexico, Canada, Jamaica

♦Where did you go to school?
I attended Michigan State University and earned my Bachelor’s in Linguistics and German.

♦What TechSmith product do you use the most? What do you use it for?
I definitely use Snagit the most, and I often publish to Screencast.com. I use Snagit most often to help explain to a customer where they can locate something on our website or to provide assistance with ordering our products. Following is an example using a Snagit capture where I point out where a customer needs to click to add maintenance to their order:

The post Meet the TechSmith German Sales Team appeared first on TechSmith Blogs.

Original calendar set

Tower built out of calendar set pieces

Did you know that LEGO is the contraction of two Danish words, “leg godt” which means “play well”? Around TechSmith, one thing we know how to do is play! Each Christmas we create a new and creative calendar to send out for the holidays. A couple of years ago, the calendar was a LEGO set that could be rebuilt each month to correspond with the amount of days in that particular month.

It turns out that it could also be built into any kind of creation that the imagination could conjure up! A few of the guys on our Camtasia Relay team took it upon themselves to collect just a few calendars and reach for the sky. The result was quite impressive, and they are still standing today….

LEGOs and Snagit

Here are some fun ways to mix LEGOs and Snagit!

TechSmith’s own Betsy Weber took these Star Wars LEGO photos with Instagram on her iPhone and then created the captions in Snagit.

Think of all the uses! You could create custom greeting cards, Facebook profile pics with captions, and much more!

Mini TechSmithies have fun with LEGOs

Some of the children in my kids’ after-care program decided to make some pretty elaborate LEGO creations. I added Snagit callouts and gave them the recognition they deserved! We also have a few mini TechSmithies who are LEGO fans, so please check out the creations below! If you want to try your hand at creativity with LEGOs and Snagit, then download our free, 30-day trial version today.

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