Dynamic WEATHER: Conversation with Kurt Dupont

Kurt Dupont, based out of Belgium heads PresentationPoint, a company that creates several amazing PowerPoint add-ins. After his Computer Science studies, Kurt started with Andersen Consulting (Accenture nowadays) in Brussels. After 3 years he moved to the Brussels Airport Terminal Company that runs the Brussels airport - this last placement inspired the start-up of Take-off (now known as PresentationPoint) in 1998.

In this conversation, Kurt discusses Dynamic WEATHER, an add-in that lets you spice your PowerPoint slides with weather conditions and forecasts.

Geetesh: Can you tell us more about Dynamic WEATHER, and how this evolved as an (or what motivated you to create this) add-in for PowerPoint?

Kurt: Dynamic WEATHER is a PowerPoint add-in that allows you to display real-time weather information in your slide show. You can add one or multiple cities worldwide to the weather watch list and the add-on will collect the current weather conditions and weather forecasts of the next coming days.

After that, you add a simple text box to your slide and you can display things like current temperature, sunrise and sunset, wind speed, visibility and many more. Or display tomorrow's high and low temperatures.

Or insert a picture and link it to today's weather conditions so that you get a nice icon, representing the weather type. Or display the expected weather type for tomorrow or for day after tomorrow.

Then you play the slide show and Dynamic WEATHER will update the information continuously. Tomorrow's predictions become today's conditions. Your slide show is a personal and localized weather channel on your computer.

We had this weather information already in our DataPoint product. But that is for "experts" only. With this new and simple Dynamic Weather add-on, everyone can show real-time weather information now on their slides.



Geetesh: What scenarios do you look at when you think about intended uses for Dynamic WEATHER?

Kurt: You could spice your sales or project presentation next time with live news and weather information, but I don't expect much change there (LOL). But some people use a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation as a stand-alone and ever-running kiosk slide show to welcome people at the reception desk, company or building. Think about a gas station, or theater. Next to the prices in a gas station, you also show traffic conditions and weather information. At a theater, you display where which event is scheduled, accompanied with weather information and current time.



Of course, people will not set up kiosk presentations everywhere with weather information alone. No, people add time and live news and live weather information, to the normal messages on their slides, in order to make it more attractive. A slide show with security information in a factory, becomes boring very fast. But more viewers can be reached when you add time and weather onto it. Only because the information is continuously changing, people will look up more frequently.

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