evolvingWe

A simple process for recording your product demo videos

josh ledgard — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:24:00 GMT

Someone recently asked me how I created the Telligent Community 5.0 demo video that you can watch here. The thing that made this the easiest was TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio product. Using their fine software as a base I was able to use the following process…

Created the rough outline “on paper” of the scenes I wanted… like white boarding a real movie.
Used the Camtasia Recording tool to capture clips with audio notes… not final audio. The key point is that I didn’t have time to try and do it all at once in one smooth 10 minute demo.
Then I laid the clips out in the camtasia project, trimmed, and inserted the transitions/zooms, etc. I had a time limit in mind that I didn’t want to go over and had filed too much.
I did the transitions because I didn’t want to try and fake like it was one smooth demo. It’s a series of stories that are cohesive.
I recorded the audio. Camtasia lets you do this one snippet of video at a time and has a great tool with keyboard shortcuts to pause the video on certain frames for callouts if you need to add more content.

Each section was tightly scripted audio content so I didn’t stumble much.

Finally Camtasia lets you output in any number of formats depending on the need.

Other Important Tips

Find a good Mic. I went through 5 before I found one with minimal static and background noise. Camtasia has filters for this, but they can only do so much.
Send dogs, kids, spouses, etc away or give them fair warning you’ll be grumpy if they ruin an awesome take.

Finally, show it to other people and watch it frequently yourself until you are convinced the points you whiteboarded come across. You’ll find that some stuff just doesn’t work well. What’s your process? Do you have any tips?

Posted to Software and tagged as camtasia , video , recording , tips

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Treat existing site members better than new ones

josh ledgard — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:28:00 GMT

Your ROI may be based on new member registrations, but you can’t forget about treating your existing members better. They are going to be your strongest advocates.

Done poorly… Linkedin – Requires new page loads and extra clicks for existing users.

Done well… Facebook – Login options for existing members right on home page.

Posted to Design

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10 Tips for Running Live Virtual Presentations

josh ledgard — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 02:42:00 GMT

Every other week our product team completes an iteration and holds a demo meeting to showcase new features, improvements, comps, spike results, etc. We do this meeting online via LiveMeeting & a phone conference system. We average around 50 participants (including customers & partners!) and 4-8 presenters each week. It’s a circus and we’ve learned a lot…

1. Be a participant too – If you are the organizer of the meeting and not a solo presenter you need to know what the viewers are seeing. I typically log into our meetings as both the presenter and as an attendee on a separate machine. This way I get a sense of how the content & demos are translating for everyone else. If you are busy presenting make sure you have someone else playing the observer role to give you feedback.

2. Have a presenter backchannel – Our team is always on IM and our demo presentations are no exception. It’s a great way to pass along signals like “Lets wrap this up” or “You’ve got time for one more”.

3. Log in early and test the links – No one likes hearing whatever terrible hold music your company has and it’s no fun making sure the links work in the first 5 minutes of the meeting.

4. Practice Demos in Advance – I always know ahead of time what demos are going to go better than others. The best demos are the ones done by the people that sent me a screencast before the meeting. They’ve already figured out the rough script (all it takes is one/two tries really) and tend to keep them more concise & to the point without “click-wandering” through the feature.

5. Assume people will miss the event – And post the results, videos, & recordings afterwards to get feedback from people that couldn’t make it live.

6. Bump up the color settings – Livemeeting, in particular, defaults to 256 colors. If most of your participants are going to have a broadband connection please adjust the colors up. Here is a quick tutorial…

Share your slides or application.

Hover at the top of the screen to pull down this menu…

Click sharing options

Open the display tab on the sharing options screen

Change to 16 or 24 bit color.

Rejoice at the glory of broadband meetings!

Remember that all the presenters need to do this since there is no “Meeting Default” that I’ve found.

7. Be aware of your screen size – Not everyone in the world has a 24”cinema display 2560-by-1600-pixel resolution screen. Either adjust your resolution down to a more reasonable 1280x768 or shrink your application window down. Otherwise the viewers will be scrolling their screen to keep up. Livemeeting doesn’t scale the display.

8. Be wary of desktop sharing – Sharing your whole desktop could cause a scrolling issue if you have a large screen, but if you don’t need to switch apps during your presentation then only share the app. This will maintain viewer focus and they won’t see all of your mail, messenger, twitter, & facebook alerts popping up. Wife IMs FTL.

9. Avoid scrolling quickly – Be aware that, for the viewers, it takes a while for the screen to refresh sometimes. Assume there is a couple seconds of lag time. If you scroll down, click something, and the page refreshes…. most people will miss it. Pause at the point of action and explain what you are clicking on.

10. Set ground rules & paint the room – We’ll often have a welcome slide we leave up while people are logging in that explains that QnA is to be held, mute phones if you aren’t presenting, how many people are in attendance, etc. I’ll also re-enforce those messages at the start of the presentations by saying something like “50 is the crowd today”. It’s easy to think, when you are alone in your office, that it’s just you and the presenter… so describe the room and who is in it.

I’ve probably missing something, but I’ve been thinking about this for a while and wanted to capture these off the top of my head for posterity. Enjoy!

Posted to Business and tagged as livemeeting , presenting , tips

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They Came from Facebook

josh ledgard — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:14:00 GMT

Your next customers. They are coming from Facebook. You need to welcome them with open arms, make it easy for them to sign-in, and bring all their friends to your community.

Which brings me to news that was too cool for me to just tweet. Telligent’s friends at 4-Roads have developed a Facebook Connect module for Community Server that you can implement on your Community Server site today! The module is Nexus and it’s pretty cool. Here is my own crude visualization:

And here is a video that illustrates the results you can expect…

On a more serious note. Facebook is going to remain a central location for users, a starting point online, and essentially represent the mainland of the online world… but you have these cool islands you want people to visit. People do all sorts of cool things on your island they can’t do on facebook… but you need to build them bridges to the island. This lets you do just that.

Check out http://www.4-roads.com/shops/products/nexus_5F00_personal.aspx for more information.

Posted to Business and tagged as community-server , partner , facebook

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The only tools you need spec software in 2009

josh ledgard — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 01:50:00 GMT

This post highlights the tools you need to be a PM today in order to ideate & define the products & specifications you own. If you need more than this you are doing it wrong. The idea is to clearly communicate the goals & intent of your specifications well enough so that your development teams can start their own iterative cycles rapidly.

This list is not intended to cover bug tracking or work item management… if you read my list of grievances you’ll know I don’t have a solution for that yet.

0. Evernote – You aren’t always focusing on the things that you get inspired to do in your daily life. You need a way to capture that inspiration in an organized fashion so that when the time is right you can start pulling together these inspiration into ideas. Evernote is a tool that lets you do just that. Hell, there are iPhone & Windows Mobile clients that lets you record voice, picture, or text notes while you are out and about.

1. A public wiki – Whatever public means to you… the point is that you shouldn’t be writing novels and you should be sharing ideas early & iterating often. Word, today, makes it a pain to get feedback on documents, keep them up to date, and invite mass participation. Publish your goals, feature ideas, user stories, and conceptuals more often and more broadly than you ever thought you should. Clearly label things as drafts, but don’t be afraid.

The truth is that, opening the door to collaboration early doesn’t make you look bad… it actually is a tool that can help you get more support. People are always more bought in on something when they’ve had the opportunity to give you their 2 cents… even if they only had 1 to give. The second truth is that just publishing something to the wiki doesn’t mean you’ll get hundreds of comments right away.

2. Balsamiq – A PM is not a product designer. I’ve learned that you also shouldn’t pretend to be. Your goal is to, as efficiently as possible, impart experts with the vision of success you have in your head. Your “PM-Franken-Comps” need to be developed quickly and also allow for rapid iteration as the stories evolve. Once you have general agreement you should be turning your ideas over to the real design experts. Balsamiq is the tool you need for this. Visio is great, but it’s pricey and typically overkill for what you need.

3. Powerpoint – I’ve only recently seen this used as I’m about to describe, but I think we will see more of it in 2009. There is something powerful in the combination of a tool like Balsamiq & the animated nature of a powerpoint presentation. Take your Franken-Comps, drag them onto slides, add an animation or two, and present your ideas in story format that mocks a user clicking through your application. Bonus points for recording a narrated version of your presentation that you publish as a video. Oh, BTW, it’s also still the best tool for building presentations available today on the market.

4. Snagit – The next great thing has been implemented, but something is wrong… or could be better about the UI. You need to capture that quickly, add a note about what needs to be improved, and move on. Snagit makes that incredibly easy. Well worth the $49 dollars. In the last year alone I’ve snagged and added notes to over 500 items!

5. Paint.Net – This tool is hanging on by a thread for me and, given my resolutions in 2009, will likely get removed for PM work. It used to be my tool of choice for building out conceptuals, but it’s being squeezed out by Balsamiq, Evernote, & Snagit. The only thing left I use it for on a regular basis is when I want to demonstrate an idea that’s a combination of 2 or 3 other things layered. The snagit editor handles layers less elegantly and make it difficult to edit something a bit more detailed. So, if I want to take a page from CS, and re-order the layout of the page as well as show a new navigation concept I might drag things together here.

I’m sure everyone has their own favorite toolbox, but this one is mine and I wanted to share my thoughts. Enjoy!

Posted to Design and tagged as pm , conceptual , software , development , itterative , ideas , tools , wiki

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Resolution: Do Less with More

josh ledgard — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:34:00 GMT

That’s it. My resolution for 2009 is to do less with more. This probably sounds counter intuitive. Shouldn’t we all be looking to do more with less given the economy? Nope…

In 2009 I’m going to do fewer things, but do them with more effort. With everyone cutting back somehow, the real challenge, is going to be deciding where to invest your limited resources. And I’ll take that a step further and say that you should cut back your scope beyond the point that you’ve cut back resources. The victory will come when you outshine the competition by focusing on the most pressing issues and knocking results out of the park.

So, in 2009, I resolve to:

Read less and apply what I learn more.
Follow less people more intently on Twitter & Evolution (Telligents awesome intranet community).
Respond to less e-mails, but give more value to those that I do reply to.
Accept less meeting invitations and make sure there are clear expectations on the meetings I do attend.
Use less tools & services while learning how to use the ones that remain better.
Solve less problems with our products, but solve the ones we do pick better.

The genesis from this really came from the success of my 2008 resolution to watch less bad TV & movies. In the last year I’ve cut back significantly on the number of hours that would have been wasted and also more fully enjoyed the entertainment I have engrossed myself with. Now I’m expanding that philosophy into my work & personal life more fully.

In 2009 our products will also help you do less with more. You’ll be doing fewer things, but you will do them with more passion, more energy, and more measured results than you’ve ever done before.

Posted to Business and tagged as telligent , evolution , philosophy

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Happy Belated Festivus: Time to Air the Grievances

josh ledgard — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 18:54:00 GMT

You all should know by now that yesterday was Festivus. One of my favorite festivus traditions is the "airing of grievances". In that spirit I present this post. I've got a lot of problems with you people...

MSFT - I have a few beefs with you, but the biggest is probably the stock price. From 36 to 19 over the last year. Really? Hire Jerry to compete with the Apple messages and then drop something that had good potential. Really?! Vista! Really? And our own Ledgard Live search cashback FAIL after waiting 4 weeks to hear back from support? Really?!? Letting us hire away some of your best people over the last year and watching other talented LV 64+ folks leave in disgust... wait, I kind of benefit from that one. :-) I'm hoping for Windows 7 to help turn this ship around. Really... I am.

Safeway.com - I kept hoping you'd invest in the online shopping experience... which has slowly deteriorated to the point where it is, again, faster to drive to one of your stores and shop. You had so much potential if you just borrowed some simple concepts from other online retailers like favorite lists, meal combos to order everything at once, recommendations, product ratings, etc. Instead you just let the site rust and suffer severe performance and search failures. Amazon Fresh FTW with delivery windows down to an hour (not 4 hour windows with late drivers as seen on safeway.com) and a store that leans on Amazons premiere online shopping experience.

Online Project Management Tools - You are all on notice. Someone is going to come into this space and eat your lunch in the next year as companies continue to look for online tools to streamline workflows and reduce costs. If you are going to charge upwards of $10 per seat for this stuff I shouldn't be teaching everyone on my team to middle click your links during triage sessions because opening items takes forever. You need to let people remove the fields, reports, and parts of your applications that are not needed. SCRUM should be simple. There's a set of stories & associated tasks & bugs... it shouldn't be this hard.

Twitter - Between the outages and the lack of forward progress on the platform & features you made my grievances list. Conversation tracking anyone? How about grouping users? It's one thing to say it's a platform and let all the Air developers hack away, but it's another to outright ignore the needs of your users by not providing useful features... that maybe people would pay for and give you some revenue. Make the ultimate client in 2009 and charge for it for starters.

Facebook - Is it my fault that I've used your service to connect with over 100 people? Now my news feed is useless and I expect you to help me do something about it. Why do I have to "install" an application (and give them access to my PII) to see a Christmas card? Didn't we figure out E-cards via e-mail 10 years ago? There are multiple steps backward here for the social networking step forward. It reminds me when I saw an IPTV demo once and they said "Look, you can change channels in less than a second!" Great, you haven't caught up with TV from the 50's yet!

Ebay - I'm not sure what happened to you. Your service ushered in the democratization of online commerce. It used to look like this. Step 1: Find junk. Step 2: Take picture, enter title, description, & price. Step three 3: Profit. Have any of your employees actually tried to sell something recently? It's like an 8 page form that doesn't remember any of your settings. Here is a free idea... Make your iPhone app a 1 step listing tool. I take a picture of something, you use a service like Amazon has to recognize items for categorization. I give you a price, title, and description... matched up with the data you bring back on the item and similar items... and my item is for sale. I'll volunteer to pay an express listing fee. Start saving me time again and not costing it with your crazy listing process.

Online Television - I'm hoping that you'll figure out a model soon. Remember that we got DVRs to skip commercials. Now the industry thinks they can backdoor commercials into our lives by injecting them over and into online shows. I won't stop using Hulu (yet), but you are coming close to crossing a line with me and the ad space. May I suggest a radical new model to throw cable companies for a loop... I can watch as much free TV as I want online with the ads injected... hell, put more in, but once I decide to subscribe to a show take the ads out for me. TV ala-cart with a sampling model. Then, for the shows I'm subscribed to let me play them on my devices.

Honorable mentions:

Comcast - You charge me too much for all this stuff I don't use and your traditional support/servicing model sucks. Please put @comcastcares in charge with a big promotion in 2009... those guys made my Holiday Cheers list coming soon.

Local Telcos like Verizon - You also charge too much for too little and tried to scare me when I canceled my service to go cell/skype only. "You know that if there is an emergency in your house your family could be in danger because the authorities won't have your exact address..." how much for this piece of mind... $16 a month... no thanks.

The Yankees - CC, Burnet, AND Mark Teixeira? You would have made the main list if it wasn't so much fun to hate you as a Red Sox fan and you didn't gladly pay your luxury tax to the other teams.

Merry Christmas & later peeps!

Posted to Software

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Amazon has the ingredients to change mobile shopping

josh ledgard — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:22:00 GMT

The iPhone app Amazon released today could be really huge. For the uninitiated they let you "remember” items while you are out shopping by taking pictures. I’ve been doing this for a while now with the Evernote application, but Amazon is taking it one step further. They are now going to attempt to recognize the item for you to link to Amazon.

They have effectively turned all brick an mortar stores into their own storefront where, one can only assume, they will also leverage the location awareness of the photo to beat the price you are standing in front of one day. This could be huge if the work out the kinks and go the extra mile. You’ll see, from my example, it was 1 out of 3 for recognition…

Ok. It was really 1 out of 2. :-) I guess I shouldn’t expect them to find me a dog breeder that sells insecure Bernese Mountain dogs… or should I?

Side note to Amazon… please offer MP3 downloads from the app to the iPhone!

Update: They are now 2 for 2, but the router would have taken to long to find me still in the store and they would have missed an opportunity to undercut prices.

Posted to Business and tagged as iphone , amazon , shopping

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I’m officially here to make others better again

josh ledgard — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:29:00 GMT

Over the last few weeks it’s hit me. Somewhere between being 1 of 3 Telligent Product PMs in the spring and now leading a group of 7 with a growing line of products… my job officially transitioned into lead mode again.

My purpose has shifted more completely to making everyone around me better and delegation has become more critical than my own contributions. One of the signs that this has happened is my daily calendar…

It’s not that I don’t contribute anymore. We have a great team of independent and capable PMs & Designers, but I’ve reached a point where I’m finding that my investments with team members is paying off more than investments on my own tasks. Ideally I can lead by example in a few areas. It’s a transition that gets easier the more times you go through it but something that you need to realize as your team size grows.

Posted to Business and tagged as management , calandar , schedule

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Don't cross the streams in online communities

josh ledgard — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:13:00 GMT

There are plenty of good lessons to take away from the following deck by Randy Farmer.

Context Is King: Lessons from Online Communities

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: communities incentive)

To me, a big one was that you can't cross the streams of content in feeds to the point where you run out of context. It will be important, as we continue to evolve a users event/activity stream into Inbox 2.0 to separate contexts effectively for users through the use of smart filters that are determined by the users context.

Posted to Design

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