Paolo Tosolini

How mobile video can make you a communication hero

Sat, 04 May 2013 11:34:00 -0700

I’m a big believer that the best camera is the one that’s with you. So if you own a smartphone, you already have what it takes to create good videos.

But does this principle apply also in a business environment, where you might be asked to interview a client at an event, or visually document a procedure for training purposes? Yes, it does and while your smartphone alone is a good start, you may want to consider a few apps and accessories to enhance the quality of your deliverable.

Here are a few resources that you’ll find handy if you want to try video storytelling with your smartphone.

Mobile video shopping list by Drew Keller, curator of Storyguide.net
Video tutorial: How to supersize your smartphone to capture better audio and video

Drew and I are also frequent speakers on the topic of mobile video in corporate communications. Here is the presentation that we recently delivered at a conference hosted by Ragan Communication and Disney

Online video syndication strategies for businesses Organizations...

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 10:14:00 -0800

Online video syndication strategies for businesses

Organizations increasingly make use of video to effectively deliver their messages externally to their customers / partners, and internally to their employees.

This presentation, which is part of our online video bootcamp organized by Ragan Communications, helps you answer this complex question: How and where do you publish online video in your company?

Boost your online video capabilities with Ragan Communications...

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 09:49:00 -0800

Boost your online video capabilities with Ragan Communications hands-on bootcamps

I’m glad to announce a partnership among my employer RUN Studios, StoryGuide.net and Ragan Communications to hold a series of one-day workshops focused on best practices in video production and distribution. With online video becoming a strategic communication channel for organizations of all kinds and sizes, it’s increasingly important to master the art of content planning, production, and syndication via social channels. Workshop participants will acquire the right confidence and knowledge to make an effective use of this medium, both as a communication and learning tool internally and externally to their organizations. Topics covered include:

Rules of storytelling
Script basics and when to skip the script
What equipment you need to get started and how much it’ll cost
Cameras, files & formats: What path makes the most sense for you?
The production practices survival guide: Camera height, framing, & environment
Sequencing and mastering ways to avoid the “talking head” video
How to shoot an interview (it’s not as straightforward as you think)
How to set up 3-point (or interview) lighting
The best way to shoot when you can’t use external lighting
Why sound is so important and how you can make yours better
Editing basics and the importance of b-roll
Social media distribution and syndication in a changing media landscape
Adding mobile video to your marketing mix

The workshops are held by award-winning television producer and editor Drew Keller, and myself, Director of Digital and Emerging Media at RUN Studios. Ragan Communications is offering the bootcamp as a pre-conference or as a stand alone event. For upcoming dates and availability please refer to Ragan’s web site.

How to Launch an Internal Video-sharing Program (I originally...

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 13:01:00 -0700

How to Launch an Internal Video-sharing Program

(I originally contributed this post to the July ‘12 edition of CW Bulletin by IABC - International Association of Business Communicators)

Today, communicators have so many options to choose from when delivering messages to their internal audiences. Email and web pages have been the norm for years, constituting the traditional “push” and “pull” communication models. But as technology has become more affordable and easier to use, online video has emerged as a dominant employee communication medium.

Organizations should embrace online video for internal communications for many reasons. Here are some of the lessons I learned during my tenure at Microsoft, where I had the opportunity to launch and manage the company internal video-sharing platform called Academy Mobile.

Why you should care about video

Shel Holtz, ABC, IABC Fellow, principal of Holtz Communication + Technology, said it best: “Face-to-face remains incredibly important, but not always practical. Video is the next-best thing, since you can still look in the speaker’s eyes, hear his voice and see his body language. It’s not the same as face-to-face, but it’s closer than anything else.”

It’s because of this visual richness that many communicators are extra cautious before jumping with both feet into the online video pool. It requires more work to create a good video than to craft an email communique, and if something goes wrong, it’s easier to spot the spoiler. Good is not necessarily synonymous with expensive. Sometimes videos that were inexpensive to make can have the greatest impact. Authenticity trumps professional production, especially given how the YouTube phenomenon has trained our eyes to accept video that is far from broadcast quality at all times.

Video storytelling consultant Drew Keller outlines some of the basic qualities of “good” videos:

A concise, clear, focused message with a call to action
An emotional storyline that explains the situation, the problem and the solution
A prepared subject (as necessary) who is comfortable in front of a camera
A suitable environment for the shoot
A proper technical setup (lighting, sound, equipment)

Video production is both an art and a science, and I’d mistakenly oversimplify the matter if I argued that there is a one-size-fits-all formula that works for every organization and scenario. Instead, I’ll highlight how some organizations, including Microsoft, have adopted online video for internal communications.

Meet me now or watch me later

Online video can be delivered in two ways: in real time or on demand. Real-time videos require all parties to be present and engaged at the same time. Examples of real-time videos include a CEO town hall that is streamed live to all employees or a webinar where a presenter delivers an online demo to a virtual team of co-workers located around the world.

Cisco, which manufactures video networking gear, has fully embraced online video as part of its organizational culture. Many employees telecommute from home using unified communication desktop software and, for important meetings (including candidate interviews), there are high-definition telepresence systems available at various Cisco offices.

Wells Fargo bank has set up multiple studios in the U.S. to record regular company newscasts that are delivered daily to each employee’s desktop. The flagship program, called Take Five, is professionally produced by employees for employees and features different themes every day. They also operate mobile webcast stations that are deployed as needed to record presentations at various branches.

Live video events can further extend their reach when they are recorded and made available on-demand for later viewing. At Microsoft, we discovered that, on average, three times more people usually watch prerecorded live videos at their own leisure, often while doing other tasks like checking their email. They also often download the media on their mobile devices. This freedom to consume content anytime, anywhere and on any device is something that employees find valuable, as it fits well with their busy lifestyles.

The three pillars of a company video program

If your organization is seriously considering an internal video program, I suggest you start planning around three key pillars: infrastructure, business processes and adoption strategy.

Infrastructure is essential. Where are you going to put your videos? This is a difficult question because it usually requires the involvement of the IT department, which will inevitably bring up issues like bandwidth, storage, security and probably many other valid points. But don’t get discouraged too soon by these obstacles. My advice is to start first with a pilot program, nothing too scary or disruptive from the company intranet perspective. For example, there are external hosting services on the market that can securely store and distribute video within corporate domains, a solution that could alleviate some of your IT department’s technical concerns.

Whatever platform you end up adopting, it should offer users the opportunity to easily comment, rate and share videos. In other words, your intranet should treat media as social tools capable of spurring conversations and not for just plain consumption.

The second pillar is about business processes. Now that you’ve got an empty platform, how are you going to fill it up with content? Depending on budget and resources, video could be produced internally or outsourced. Another option that we pursued at Microsoft was crowdsourcing directly from the workforce. Through a program called Podcast-in-a-Box, we distributed cameras, recorders and editing software to employees who committed to publish three new videos each month. After two years, this program alone generated more than 2,000 videos at an estimated cost of US$40 each. Of course, not all the videos were great, but this initiative helped consolidate the notion that online media was an integral element of the organization’s internal communication and knowledge sharing.

Even better, as our video platform increased in popularity, we noticed a healthy competition among executives to be among the first to launch regular video updates to their own teams. This trend also ignited a series of requests to set up individual video channels on our platform in order to provide proper branding to key contributors.

Finally, you should consider an internal adoption strategy. Now that you have the video content and a platform, how are you going to attract viewers? Online video should be promptly integrated into your communication rhythm. Lengthy executive memos can be converted into short text summaries that include an embedded video link. If your goal is to promote grassroots contributions, try launching a contest that sparks the creativity of your employees by asking them to make videos about subjects dear to them. Reward their efforts by featuring their best videos on your intranet and internal newsletters.

Just be aware that success will take some time. At Microsoft, it took a full year before our program reached the tipping point.

Online video can be quite an effective internal communication tool, if done correctly. As an internal communicator, you are in a unique position to experiment, learn and engage with this medium. Have fun with it and keep an eye on the increasing opportunity that smartphones and tablets will offer to reach your audience.

Corporate video communications? There’s an app for that

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 11:26:00 -0700

(I originally contributed this article to Simply Communicate)

In two of my previous posts, I described the pillars of an enterprise video program, as well as how you can start leveraging your mobile device to capture better video when you don’t have a camcorder.

This article will focus on smartphone and tablet apps, and how software can transform your portable and connected device into a mobile video system to create and share powerful stories with your audience.

Given how widespread Apple devices are among corporate communicators, I’m going to cover five mobile video scenarios that make creative use of your iPhone and/or iPad.

Editing video

Picture this: You just shot a great interview with your phone, the lighting was just right and you were careful to be close enough to your subject, so her voice was loud and crisp. But your interviewee stumbled on one of the answers and you’d like to remove the bad part. Every video can benefit from some editing, and simple actions like trimming, cutting, adding captions, photos and transitions can all be accomplished right on your phone or tablet. The two apps that I like the most are Apple iMovie ($5) and Avid Studio for iPad ($5). While both apps are quite well designed, Avid Studio comes ahead on feature richness due to their recent release and given the heritage of the developer company in the professional video space.

If you prefer to shoot video on the iPhone and take advantage of the larger iPad screen for editing, you can transfer media between devices using Apple’s iPad Camera Connection Kit ($29) that consists of two separate adapters; one to connect your tablet to a USB device (like your iPhone), and the second to import photos / videos from a generic SD card. In my tests, I didn’t have any issues importing photos and videos captured with both my Canon point-and-shoot and DSLR.

Photo montages

There are instances when you want to create a video and all that’s available are some nice still photos. Don’t despair; there are apps that will convert your images into high-energy animations inclusive of a custom music soundtrack. My favorite is Animoto (free) which is a cloud service that offers free and premium plans, depending on your need to output HD videos, their length and number of source files.

Tags

Tags are a special breed of bar codes that can be scanned using a dedicated mobile app and can trigger actions like visiting a web site, dialing a number, sending a virtual contact card or simply displaying a message.

The two dominant types are QR codes and Microsoft Tags. Nowadays, you can find them pretty much everywhere, from magazines to food labels, on signs, promotional t-shirts, and more. Tags let you bridge the physical and virtual worlds, by facilitating the access to online information associated with the tagged object.

Microsoft offers a convenient free dashboard and mobile app called Tag (free) to generate and read both QR codes and its proprietary format.

If you work in internal communications, you may enjoy this video that shows how Microsoft used tags printed with edible ink on chocolate to deliver a promotional message to its employees.

Webinars

If your workforce is increasingly becoming mobile, chances are that knowledge sharing inside your organization needs to adapt to this new trend too. Demos and presentations are integral elements of any readiness program, but how can they be delivered to a mobile audience? Companies that are not already enrolled in popular services like Webex or GoToMeeting, may want to check an app called TeamViewer for Meetings (free for non-commercial use) that lets a presenter share his desktop PC in real time with a mobile audience of up to 25 participants, including audio via VOIP, file sharing, whiteboard, instant chat and more. It’s definitely worth a look.

Video messaging

Sending media across different mobile devices is risky business. Unless the handsets are from the same manufacturer, there is always the potential of video format incompatibility. MMS is a great solution that pretty much guarantees a uniform and reliable experience on smartphones, but the length of those clips is limited to less than a minute.

What about an ‘Outlook for video’? Eyejot ($4) is a video mail app that allows you to send personal video messages to other people regardless if they’re using Eyejot. The app includes a handy vCard feature that sends your contact information along with a personal video clip. Desktop users can watch Eyejot messages in their browsers and the service is free to record up to 5 minute long videos.

Do you have a favorite app that’s enhancing communications at work? Leave a comment with your feedback and experiences.

Making the most out of mobile video in internal communications

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:48:00 -0700

(I first contributed this article to Simply Communicate, UK)

Hyper-connected individuals will agree that we are living in an exciting time. It seems like there is always a new mobile app that can make your phone smarter and easier to use, the market is embracing devices with different form factors, and carriers are enhancing their networks to provide faster wireless connectivity in more areas.

But how can corporate PR and marketing professionals take advantage of these technological advancements? The way I like to look at new opportunities is by observing current and emerging trends and trying to intersect them in creative ways.

In this toolkit, I mix together social media, mobile, online video and enterprise communications to investigate if this is a recipe for success.

Platform wars

When it comes to mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, users are faced with a fundamental choice: selecting an ecosystem that will best fit their requirements.

The market today offers a good choice of platforms like iOS, Android, WebOS, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and others. If we take a closer look (at right) at how users consume mobile video today, Apple devices still come out ahead of the pack, with Android quickly catching up. (Source: Encoding.com)

From the content generation perspective, both dominant platforms feature a variety of apps that can help you create mobile video, so you can’t go wrong either way. Because apps are such an important topic, I plan to cover them in the near future with a dedicated article.

Three simple tips for shooting better mobile video

Have you ever found yourself in a situation when a client or an executive were willing to release an important statement, and you weren’t ready to record them with a camcorder?

I’m a believer of the old motto, “The best camera is always the one you have with you”. Chances are that if you own a recent smartphone model, you can use it to shoot good quality photos and videos. But impressive hardware specifications are not a guarantee that your final video will look equally good.

Here are three easy tips that will help you achieve better results when you plan to shoot video with your device:

1. Stabilize your image. Your phone is light and it’s prone to shaking when you shoot video. Make sure to hold it steady with two hands while you’re assuming a solid posture on both your feet. If you plan to shoot ‘talking head’ style and you are near a desk, consider using a tripod with a special phone mount.

2. Pay attention to lighting. The small optics on your smartphone crave a well-lit subject. Try to position your interviewee near a light source, such as a window. But don’t shoot the person against the window, as your camera will compensate for the brighter light, making your subject appear like a silhouette. Instead, have your back - as well as your subject - face the window.

3. Mind your audio. Bad audio can turn off your viewers faster than bad images. When recording an interview, make sure you are close enough to your subject so his/her voice is very clear and audible. The little microphone that is embedded in your mobile device is designed to record sounds coming from all directions; therefore your interviewee’s voice needs to dominate the surrounding noise. Ideally, make use of an external microphone as the quality of your audio will dramatically improve.

Creating your own mobile video kit

Here is a list of affordable accessories that will ‘supercharge’ your smartphone during your mobile video shoots:

GorillaPod flexible tripod by Joby
SnapMount tripod mount for iPhone 4; alternatively the PhoneBoat (Whenever possible, try to get a tripod mount specific to your phone, as any universal mount is just a compromise.)
Audio-Technica ATR3350 lavalier microphone
Microphone adapter (You need this extra cable if you plan to use any external microphone with your smartphone.)

If you feel really creative, you can assemble a mobile video rig yourself.

So…are you intrigued by the possibilities? I hope you are!

Look out for my next article in an upcoming blog post in which I share some of the best apps that will help you take advantage of mobile video in your internal and external communications.

What mobile video scenarios interest you the most? Feel free to email me at paolo@tosolini.com.

Our first Kindle eBook - Tips for the Table: All You Need to...

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:10:00 -0700

Our first Kindle eBook - Tips for the Table: All You Need to Know When Dining Out in Italy

Posted from: WA, USA

We’re delighted to announce our first eBook for Kindle titled “Tips for the Table: All You Need to Know When Dining Out in Italy”.

Take this eBook with you during your next trip to Italy. It’ll help you explore restaurants and pizzerie with the comfort of acting like a local. Learn Italian words and phrases in an easy-to-learn setting, while discovering Italian customs and etiquette.

This eBook even features ready-to-use translated sentences that will prevent potential misunderstandings at the restaurant. No worries about pronunciation! Topics covered:

Table charges and tipping
Beverages
Dining Italian style
The Italian menu
Pizza
Restaurants naming conventions
Cultural facts
Useful phrases
Glossary

Priced at an affordable $0.99, this eBook features more than 50+ pages, 24 original photos and a glossary of 90+ useful Italian words. We welcome your comments as well as your Amazon reviews!

P.S. Don’t forget to check out our Italy From The Inside blog.

Enterprise social video demystified

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:34:00 -0800

(I first contributed this article to Simply Communicate, UK)

Online video, when created and distributed effectively, offers considerable advantages: it can turn long and boring text communications into something that employees may actually watch, it can help demo a product in an engaging manner, or convey authentic enthusiasm for a particular company cause or initiative.

Are you sold yet? If you are ready to embrace video as part of your internal communications plans, this toolkit will help you plan your next steps to successfully roll out an internal video adoption program.

As a former New Media Business Manager at Microsoft, I was privileged to launch and manage the company’s ‘employee YouTube’ called Academy Mobile, which to date is hosting more than 35,000 videos.

In my experience, there are three fundamental areas you need to address in such an undertaking:

Choosing a platform
Setting some business processes
Creating an adoption strategy

Choosing the right platform

This first step aims at addressing a fundamental question: where are you going to store your videos? There are a variety of enterprise video solutions on the market that are worth evaluating, from open source ones such as Kaltura to proprietary technologies like Ignite and Qumu .

If you are running your intranet on Microsoft Sharepoint 2007 or (even better) 2010, you can use your existing infrastructure to host videos (within certain limits). Or if you are currently a Google Apps for Business user, you can leverage the power of YouTube in a more private and secure fashion.

In evaluating any of these options, keep in mind that enterprise video is more powerful when can also be accessed from mobile devices, shared easily, subscribed to via RSS, commented and rated - all features that you should be able to have out of the box.

Business processes

Business processes are rules that are often unique to each organization, and need to provide answers to questions like:

Who is allowed to create and publish video on the platform?
What’s the review process for new content?
How do you measure success with this program?
How can you properly represent each department in the company?
How do you recover the production costs for professional videos?
How do you secure confidential content?

As an example, in Microsoft we assessed the costs, risks and benefits of making Academy Mobile readily available to employees in the sales field who, for the most part, are constantly on the road and prefer a simplified access process via an extranet (using just their employee credentials) vs. the intranet (which requires a secure VPN connection with smartcard authentication).

Every video is being automatically encoded in a standard MP4 format which is pretty much compatible with every popular mobile device. We released a Windows Phone 7 app to support real time access to our archives, and promote RSS subscriptions for users interested in receiving automatic updates by specific channel or subject matter expert.

We embraced a hybrid contribution model, allowing any employee to capture and share their knowledge without any review process (crowdsourcing). We also offered affordable production services to internal teams who were looking to create professional videos at a premium cost.

To accelerate the rhythm of individual contributions, we launched early on two internal programs; the first was called Podcast-in-a-Box; the second, Academy Rewards.

The Podcast-in-a-Box was a centralized loaner program that included a portable camera, an audio recorder and screen capture software, and was available to any employee willing to commit to publish three videos each month. By meeting the minimum contribution threshold, employees could keep indefinitely the equipment even for personal use. Otherwise they would return the gear and pass it to the next person on the waiting list. The program generated more than 2000 videos in less than three years for a cost per video of about $40.

The best analogy to describe the Academy Rewards is to compare it to an air miles program, just for podcasters. Content creators were rewarded points for their efforts in making time to capture, edit and publish their valuable know-how in multimedia format. But they were granted additional points each time somebody watched their videos. In this way, contributors were also incentivized to spread the word and market their content to others. Points were redeemable for high tech gadgets through a third party online vendor. There was no better advertising for Academy Mobile than having happy employees bragging about their new laptops won, thanks to this rewards program.

Adoption strategy

Once you settle on an appropriate platform and you start filling it with fresh videos, it’s time to grow your audience. My advice is to run a pilot program in one of the most advanced departments in your organization, where you can get executive sponsorship that will drive top-bottom messaging of progressive adoption of video communications.

At the same time, you need to cultivate a bottom-up approach implementing creative ways to identify natural talents among your workforce - those who feel comfortable in front of a camera, produce quality videos and are not shy to talk about their work. These people are your best evangelists because they inspire others in following suit. Nurture their passion by making it easy for them to access tools and support, and through your internal communications, advertise their work profusely to sustain their motivation.

Ultimately, you’ll witness a long tail distribution model of video viewership, where content from executives and key internal evangelists will receive the highest amount of downloads, which in turn will inspire and expand your employee contributor base and continually grow the value of your video communications.

Are you planning to make video a first class channel in your corporate internal communications? What strategies are working best for you? Leave a comment or drop me a line if you have any questions.

Looking for a new way to introduce yourself? Try a Prezume What...

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:48:00 -0800

Looking for a new way to introduce yourself? Try a Prezume

What is a Prezume? It’s a presentation of yourself (resume) in a visual and interactive format using the popular zooming presentation editor Prezi.com.

A Prezume is not meant to replace your textual CV (Curriculum Vitae), but rather augment it when you are engaging potential clients or employers in social media. In fact, Prezi allows you to express yourself in a much richer form, adding photos, videos, animations and even QR codes. That’s right, you never know how a recruiter might contact you.

To prove that you can combine all the above in a nice presentation, I created a Prezume of myself. Let me know what you think!

Paolo Tosolini’s prezume on Prezi

How Google+ Ripples can benefit the Social Enterprise Just few...

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:30:00 -0700

How Google+ Ripples can benefit the Social Enterprise

Just few hours ago Google announced some new updates to Google Plus including Apps integration, What’s Hot, a Creative photo Kit and … G+ Ripples.
Ripples is a cool visualization tool that shows how your posts have been shared.

But is there value in using Ripples in a business context? My answer is: YES!

With G+ integrated with Apps, it’s easy to imagine how efficiencies can be accomplished within secure circles, and here is a plausible scenario: John is an internal technical trainer and he focuses on making sure that new readiness material is being disseminated to his audience (technical people). So he uses G+ to post some How-To videos and articles.
However, using Ripples he discovers that his content is being shared also among the sales field, that fall outside of his target audience. And he also finds out (thanks to Ripple) that one of the Services Dept. execs shared that content to her org too (another circle). Yet, another audience that wasn’t specifically in his charter.By visually exposing this kind of information, John is equipped with new knowledge and insights that his tutorials may actually be relevant to more than just the technical audience. This means that his colleague in charge of sales training can re-use some of this material, saving time and money to the company. And by quickly analyzing the comments, he gets some valuable feedback on how to improve his future tutorials.

How would you use Ripples and G+ for business?

Social Media massage: a creative way to do internal...

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 01:10:00 -0700

Social Media massage: a creative way to do internal communications

How can you capture the attention of your employees when you’ve an important message to deliver? If your plan is to go for depth vs. breadth, you might want to consider a Social Media massage.

At Microsoft, we experimented a new way to inform employees while giving them an opportunity to relax. During lunch time, we setup a massage area in the company cafeteria. Employees enjoyed the free treat while they were listening to a 5 minute promo podcast produced to inform and relax.

This campaign generated quite a bit of internal word of mouth and accomplished its goal while ‘delivering happiness’. Would you like a Social Media massage too?

(Audio podcasts produced by the great folks at Bigg Studios).

A creative tribute to Steve Jobs With the arrival of my new...

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 00:03:00 -0700

A creative tribute to Steve Jobs

With the arrival of my new iPhone 4S this weekend, I felt compelled to offer my personal tribute to Steve Jobs in a creative way that he might have probably appreciated.

Using my three household iPhones, I stitched together Steve’s portrait using an MIT web app called Junkyard Jumbotron. Then I used Penultimate on my iPad 2 for the handwritten caption.

Thanks Steve for continuing inspiring my creativity.

Corn maze drama: an iPhone movie

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 15:45:00 -0700

Smartphones are a joy for multimedia communicators, because they are able to capture and share important moments using not just static images but also motion pictures.

A recent research by Vid.ly shows that more than 60% of mobile video on the internet is being watched on Apple devices (see chart below).

As a happy owner of an iPhone 4, I decided to experiment the entire workflow of creating, editing, publishing a mobile video that was more sophisticated than just a simple point and shoot episode.
Given this is Halloween time, I visited a corn maze with my family and, with a little storytelling, I shot several different scenes. Then I used an app called Splice to edit them together.

It took me about an hour to assemble the final file, but I was pleasantly surprised by the robustness of Splice and its feature richness. Enjoy the video and let me know what you think.

How Google Plus Hangouts can help your business

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:46:00 -0700

(I first contributed this article as a guest post to Simply-Communicate.com)

There is a lot to like about Google’s new social networking platform called Google Plus (or simply Google+). Given my keen interest in everything related to video, enterprise and social, I’m going to focus this article on what I believe is a great feature of Google+ called Hangouts.

Hangouts is group video application that allows up to 10 people to have a face-to-face virtual meeting. One of the key differences that sets it apart from its competition is that Google offers this service for free.

But how can businesses take advantage of Hangouts?

When Google first released its Plus platform in late June 2011, Hangouts looked mostly like another nice consumer tool. In fact, in a recent blog post titled “Is Google+ Hangouts ready for the social enterprise?”, I wrote that the new tool wasn’t sophisticated enough to be utilized in any compelling business scenario. Rather, organizations want to conduct remote presentations, do screen recordings of important virtual meetings, easily schedule events and share documents with coworkers.

Thanks to Google’s fast product cycles, after just three months from the launch of Google Plus, the company has announced a major update to Hangouts that addresses several of its original shortcomings.

Let’s analyze the new features from the perspective of business utilization.

Screen/desktop sharing
Initiating a Hangout is simple: go to your Google+ Stream and click on the orange button that says Start a Hangout. Then invite people or entire circles to join you and wait for somebody to show up.

Before the update, it was very difficult to conduct a normal webinar in Hangouts, especially if you wanted to present any sort of visuals with a decent chance to be readable by your remote participants. Now, if you have a PowerPoint, Prezi or just want to demo an application running in a separate window, you can do it by using the screen sharing feature.

In my experiments, I noticed a certain lag of the video feed as the service struggled to create the best resolution that could reproduce the presenter’s screen. But overall, I consider it a fairly good experience.

Jeris Miller, communications co-chair at TEDxRainier, has been successfully using Hangouts to engage with event speakers and prepare them for their final presentations.

“Google+ is G+nius,” Miller says. “I think many are lacking imagination in just how powerful this platform can be!”

Meanwhile, the staff at simply-communicate have also dabbled with Google Hangouts to conduct their weekly editorial meetings. If their experiences continue to go this well – namely the superior audio and video quality, the visually pleasing screen alignment of each of the participants, and the ability to simultaneously watch YouTube videos - I’m told simply’s Skype meetings will soon be a thing of the past.

Scalability of Hangouts has also been addressed in Google’s new update. While the limit of 10 active engaged participants still exists, Google has announced a feature called Hangouts On Air, which allows a meeting to be broadcasted live to those who were not able to secure any of the lucky 10 spots.

Document sharing/collaboration
The integration of Google Docs with Hangouts makes it easy for attendees to share documents, edit them simultaneously and sketch ideas while they are still running a video group chat.

“Sometimes it’s much more efficient to finalize your deliverables when you’re online with your coworkers,” explains Drew Keller, Principal at StoryGuide.Net and Business Video Storyteller. “It’s fascinating watching two people editing the same document in real time while they can also talk and see each other.”

Mobile Hangouts
Google+ comes to mobile phones in a form of an app (available for Android and iPhone only for now). Hangouts mobile support is limited to joining existing events, rather than initiating new ones from your device. Still, I find it very convenient to be able to have a video conversation with a group of people without touching my laptop.

Oscar Mager, a Social Recruiting specialist from The Netherlands, believes that Hangouts have a huge potential for recruiting.

“Hangouts are great for interviewing candidates, involving multiple team members in a virtual meeting and contacting potential candidates directly while in the Hangout, Mager explains. “Now the mobile app makes this process even easier.”

What’s next on our wish list?

There are a couple more desirable features that would further help Hangouts make inroads in business. The first one is a simplified way to schedule meetings and the second is the possibility to record a session. I can see both features eventually making their appearance as they can naturally integrate with Google Calendar and YouTube.

None of them are show stoppers, so rather than focus on what’s still missing, it’s time to have fun and do some serious Hanging out while enjoying the creative opportunities that this social gem has to offer.

iPad experiment: Video remix of 12 Social Media thought leaders

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 22:45:00 -0700

This weekend I learned about a newly released iPad app called MadPad, which allows you to capture images and sounds from your everyday life and organize them into a fun video soundboard.

Inspired by a creative clip by YouTube celebrity MysteryGuitarMan, I decided to use the app to capture short soundbites from 12 social media thought leaders and remix them to see what would come out of it. What do you think?

Is Google+ Hangouts ready for the social enterprise? Much has...

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 12:34:00 -0700

Is Google+ Hangouts ready for the social enterprise?

Much has been written already about Google’s new social platform called Google Plus, to the point that social media consultant Chris Brogan has already announced a book about using Google+ for Business.

Given my passion for experimenting anything video and social media, I was curious to find out if the new video chat feature called Google+ Hangouts was a potential candidate for a corporate environment. So I partnered with Jeris Miller, Communications Co-Chair at TEDxRainier, to run a few experiments and push the tool beyond what it was originally conceived for.

There is a lot to like about Hangouts: it’s free, it allows up to 10 people to have a face-to-face virtual meeting including chat, and even watching a YouTube video together. But what about business users?

Some of the basic requirements for effective webinars are easy scheduling, presentation / desktop sharing and ability to record your session, all features that are currently missing in Hangouts. But let’s see if there are some workarounds:

Scheduling
Jeris has been using a site called http://gphangouts.com to schedule her TEDxRainier speaker communications with good success. This third party site allows the listing of your hangout in a public directory and offers some integration with Google Calendar. I personally find the process very manual and not particularly intuitive, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Presentation / Desktop sharing
While seeing your audience is a nice consumer feature, businesses prefer to have conversations over slides. In fact, popular video conference tools like GoToMeeting, WebEx and Live Meeting do a great job in offering a high quality picture of your presentation / demo. Because Hangouts doesn’t offer this opportunity, we looked for alternative ideas, including using an application called ManyCam to switch the video source from our webcam to the desktop or using a document camera to project handwritten notes from an iPad.

Needless to say, none of these solutions are viable, mainly because the quality of the projected image is fairly poor. A much better way to share a presentation is to invite your viewers to watch your slide deck using the new PowerPoint 2010 Broadcast feature, or if you use Prezi, to leverage Prezi Meeting to control your show remotely. Either way, the experience is not integrated in Hangouts as the presentation sharing happens in a separate window.

Recording a session
Hangouts happen in real time, but sometimes you want to save the conversation for on demand viewing. This feature is not supported yet, and you have to resort to separate screencasting software like Camtasia to record your session. Users not familiar with this kind of tool may find the process not particularly user friendly.

What’s our conclusion? In its first iteration, Google+ Hangouts is definitely a consumer play. It’s a fairly intuitive tool that is fun to use and will compete directly with Skype Group video calling, especially because of its unbeatable price (free).

As per its social enterprise ambitions, we’ll have to wait until Google addresses the above limitations and add a few more integration points, especially with their remarkable Google Docs suite and mobile devices.

Hangouts’ future is very bright and I certainly look forward to further experiments with Enterprise Social Video.

How to use Augmented Reality for Internal Communications

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 10:58:00 -0700

(I first contributed this article as a guest post to Simply-Communicate.com)

Augmented Reality (AR) has become a popular term these days, thanks especially to the widespread adoption of powerfully connected smartphones featuring high- resolution cameras and geolocation capabilities.

The definition of AR is simple: take a real view of the world and enhance it with computer-generated information. For instance, you are visiting a new city and you are looking for an Italian restaurant nearby.

Rather than using a ‘traditional’ service like Google Maps, you decide to try an AR app like Layar (available for iPhone, Android and Symbian phones). With Layar, you just input the term ‘Italian restaurant’, then point your phone towards various directions and you’ll see floating labels on top of your actual street view with the distance and direction of the closest restaurants.

Because of its novelty and fun nature, AR applications have mostly found a welcome reception in marketing campaigns, like the Ben & Jerry iPhone app that shows virtual cartoons when you point the phone on the lid of their ice-cream cups.

But, is there a spot for AR in employee communications? I think there is, thanks to an iPhone app called PixLive.

What is PixLive?

It’s an application that allows you to virtually tag any object around you. It could be a poster on the hallway, your computer, a desk lamp or your beloved coffee mug. The way it works is simple: snap a photo of the object you want to virtually tag and attach a video, text, image or sound file to it. Everything can be created on the mobile device itself without any computer.

Here is an idea for your next team morale event: an AR treasure hunt in the office. Let’s assume you want to award a gift certificate for a restaurant to your entire team. Rather than simply handing it out (which is so passe’), make your employees find the reward by hiding it somewhere in the building.

To create your first hint, for example, snap a photo of the name tag of your communications manager and link a video explanation to it that will lead to the next hint. When an employee waves his iPhone running PixLive in front of that name tag, it’ll bring your video alive suggesting the next step in the treasure hunt. You can repeat these steps through the final hint that will lead to the gift certificate. Isn’t that fun?

I experimented this very game with my kids recently and they were completely hooked. They also learned quickly how to tag objects and create their own treasure hunt, which is a testimony of how intuitive this software is.

Other scenarios for AR

New employee orientation is another opportunity to dabble with AR. Your company has various facilities and you want to offer a self-service mechanism for new recruits to learn and fully take advantage of them. One way to do it would be, for example, to add a Microsoft Tag to the entrance door of those places. Using a mobile tag scanner app, employees could retrieve additional information related to those venues. Alternatively, you could snap a photo of the name tags of the facilities, and attach a multimedia explanation to them, perhaps recorded by the employees’ respective managers.

And finally, here is a scenario that takes into account your corporate intranet. Let’s assume you just completed the redesign of your team site and want to offer a unique insight about this project. You can take a photo of your new web site and tag it with an audio / video commentary. This will also work for book covers on sites like Amazon.com where authors can deliver a welcome message to viewers and change it regularly without using any of the publisher’s tools. This trick will not work if your triggering photo just contains plain text, which doesn’t have enough differentiating elements to distinguish your site from any other out there.

Apps like PixLive, Layar, Junaio and many others are inspirational and easy to use, and they deserve a try if you are open to exploring cutting edge internal communications practices. Let’s take advantage of the power of our smartphones and learn how they can add a dimension of fun into our jobs.

How to create a stunning background effect in Prezi.com

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 21:39:00 -0700

Not long ago, Prezi.com featured my presentation on Enterprise Social Video on their homepage as an example of effective use of their tool to communicate a business message. Aside from the positive case study described in the presentation, I adopted a curious technique that the Prezi staff really liked, that is the blending of a strong final Call To Action with the presentation background.

In just a few weeks, my Prezi collected more than 160K views and a lot of requests to explain how I made the special font background effect. I decided to create a brief screencast tutorial so you can try that yourself. Special thanks to Shel Holtz for connecting me with the Prezi team and enjoy this short video.

YouTube for the Enterprise Finally a Reality

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 11:31:00 -0700

At the Streaming Media East 2011 event held in NYC in May, I had the pleasure to moderate a panel about enterprise social video. I feel very passionate on this topic as it brings together Web 2.0 technologies, social media, mobile and video in a new way. Most importantly, employees adopting this new way to engage and communicate with each other can greatly benefit from both productivity and personal stand points.

Representatives from Microsoft, IBM, Wells Fargo and DotSub joined me on stage to discuss best practices and challenges in encouraging and leveraging employee generated social video content. Here is the video of the session and a link to the summary article.

How I’m overcoming the fear of public speaking In my opinion,...

Sun, 08 May 2011 10:24:00 -0700

How I’m overcoming the fear of public speaking

In my opinion, public speaking is a unique experience in many ways. Every time I have to get in front of an audience, I’m going through a variety of emotions ranging from excitement for sharing my stories, nervousness about the outcome and anxiety for potential pitfalls. While I haven’t mastered yet the magic formula to fully control my feelings, I’ve been observing what has been working well for me to manage the stress of public speaking.

Preparation: This is the most effective step for me. I do rehearse my presentation both the night before and the morning of my speech.
Sleep: It’s hard to give 100% of yourself on stage if you get up already tired. I learned this lesson the hard way.
Being myself: I love people and I don’t like formalities. When I address an audience, I just try to think of myself having an informal conversation with them

With social media and online video being such hot topics, I feel very fortunate to have been able to travel this first part of the year and share new ideas and experiences in a variety of venues. As I browse the photos from these events, I can only recall the good memories of the people I met and places I visited, and that’s a great motivator to overcome the fear of my next speaking engagement.

Streaming Media East 2011, NYC (Moderating a panel on Enterprise Social Media)
Microsoft Sweden and Belgium (Delivering an Online video storytelling workshop with master Drew Keller)
Michigan State University, Lansing MI - Social Media Executive Summit 2011
Ragan Social Media Content Summit 2011, Nasdaq Marketsite, NYC
Writers UA conference 2011, Long Beach CA
2011 Social Media for PR and Corporate Communications, Las Vegas NV