PPTShare: Conversation with James Ontra

PPTshare is a line of Powerpoint add-ins including the new Desktop Slide Manager. In this Indezine exclusive, James Ontra who heads PPTshare discusses this new product that alternates between organizing and sharing your PowerPoint content -- he also talks about future plans.

Geetesh: How did PPTshare Desktop evolve.

James: PPTshare Desktop Slide Library evolved from our clients' need to better manage and control all of their disparate PowerPoint files, and to simplify video within PowerPoint. There's a wealth of valuable content stored within hundreds of PowerPoint's, and our clients needed a better way to tap that resource. Before, users, typically sales people, wasted lot of time hunting and pecking, copying and pasting, and recreating new presentations for every meeting. The PPTshare Desktop Slide Library consolidates all of a user’s PowerPoints and videos into one central location. And it automatically formats a video into a full-screen PowerPoint slide. It is the 'go to' place where users can quickly find single slides and videos for making new presentations.

Our clients asked for some specific functionality, and we built it, using the Slide Library as a foundation.

• Users asked to drag video files into library, so video slides are part of the library.
• Users asked to share presentations with video easily.
• Users asked that when their laptop is disconnected from the network, the presentation with video works.
• Managers asked to 'push' up to date slides into the users library.
• Managers asked to do it without IT getting involved.
  

With the user requests in mind, we created PPTshare.com

Geetesh: What do you plan to do this in the near future?

James: We will provide collaborative workspaces for creating, automating, managing and distributing presentation files. The PPTshare Desktop Slide Library functionality will be extended to seamlessly work with the PPTshare.com online component. And other features, such as search, user groups, and tracking will be added soon.

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