Not long ago, well actually a couple of years ago, I began writing about the need for increased use of video in our communications. I was mostly thinking vendor to customer communications.

My logic was three fold, first the technology needed to create video is now available on the desk top. On the Apple platform, which I am more familiar with, Garage Band for creating music loops, iMovie and iPhoto for movies and stills form the basis of a creative suite that enables a talented but not necessarily expert user to create engaging videos. The Adobe Creative Suite is also powerful and runs on Windows and the Mac, but for my money is unnecessarily complex, but you need Adobe or something like it to do some of the more advanced graphics. The challenge for the developer is to keep the video in a duration range of three to five minutes, and of course, to be engaging.

The second reason is slideshow burnout. There are now many books on the market about that attempt to upgrade average people’s slide presentation skills because those skills are deficient today.PresentationZen by Garr Reynolds comes to mind and there are many more. Sending someone a slide deck as if it was a fully articulated document or mock video, exposes the deficiencies of pictures only or pictures with too many bullet points on a single slide. Information was getting into, but not out of, slides and something had to be done.

The third reason that video creation is important involves transportation. Slides were created as speaking aids in a live setting and while we make great efforts to use them via web conferences, something is inevitably lost. But transportation is becoming difficult to justify, but fuel prices continue to rise and, in a recession, most organizations are in some ways restricting the frequency or type of employee travel.

Continues @ http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com