Who doesn’t love a nice and easy tool that saves you massive amounts of time? The founders of TeamSlide felt people’s frustration when they had to waste time searching for slide content through the entire system. This is how Slidefinder, TeamSlide’s new tool was born, making slide-level search possible. Oh, and free! 

Tune into our podcast to hear Heather talk about Slidefinder – how and when it was created, what problem it was solving for PowerPoint users, how it can be installed and how it actually works. By the way, it’s so simple, Boris installed it live on air in just a couple of clicks. 

That’s not all. Heather and Boris chat about the biggest mistake in presentations people make and the person who has most influenced and inspired her in her career (hi there, Jesse Itzler!). 

So, grab your headphones and enjoy this quick episode of the World of Presentations podcast where you’ll learn to find and manage your PowerPoint content withing the app. You’ll thank us later. 

 

Heather Lammie is on LinkedIn

You can find Slidefiner at Teamsli.de or in PowerPoint by clicking Get add-in

Boris Hristov
Hey there and welcome to yet another episode of The World of Presentations podcast, brought to you by Presentation agency 356labs. I’m Boris, your host today and with me it is Heather Wade. Heather, I pronounced that correctly, you see. So, Heather works for a company called Aploris and they produce a software that all of you who are into the world of business but are still being asked to present, as I like to say, whether you like it or not, you need to be aware of. The software is called TeamSlide. And Team Slide, by the way, were one of the sponsors at Present to Succeed 2021, our first event. Thank you so much, Heather, everyone on the team for supporting us. Back then it was so much needed and it mattered so, so much for us to pull off this event this time. 

This time they are bringing something new to the market. And that’s why we have Heather here to talk a little bit more about what’s happening there, what they’re what are they doing and how they can help us, how they can help you that are listening, watching this one. But before we fire these up, Heather, give us a little bit of context of how you ended up and what happened so that you are now working in the presentation industry. 

What happened there? 

Heather Lammie
Yeah, that’s a great question. So, an interesting story. I studied marketing and web development in college and started my career with Chick-Fil-A as a marketing and sales director. Have you ever had Chick-Fil-A? 

Boris
No, I have heard about the brand, obviously. But you you don’t … I’m a vegetarian. So.  I don’t eat meat,  I don’t eat any meat since I was a child. So I’m a completely different story. Yeah. 

Heather
Yeah. It’s kind of funny because I’m a vegetarian now too, so. So I totally get it. But anyways, back in the day I was not, and I was working at Chick-Fil-A and, you know, just helping them grow sales, increase awareness and a low-awareness market. And I ended up looking for a career change. And so I, I was looking around and by happenstance I met a Kartik who’s the founder of TeamSlide, and through a connection, and I joined the team and just dove right into the presentation industry. 

And so it was very random, but I was able to apply those skills from marketing and presentation industry And so now I’ve been on the team for about three years, and it’s been great. It’s so interesting to learn about, you know, the art of presentation and how it, you know… 

Boris
How do you feel about the presentation industry in general, like three years in. Is it exciting? Is it like… obviously it’s not… Probably you notice that it’s not that well-developed as some other industries, but overall, what’s your feeling here? 

Heather
I think it’s great. I think it’s something that’s almost like in a niche market, like there are only so many people that are so good at these things, you know, designing presentations and crafting these stories and even presenting. It’s, it’s like an art form. So, I think it’s really… you make a good point like people, it is kind of behind some of the other industries because it, you know, it didn’t really get a running start, I guess. But now it’s running. So it’s been really interesting to see how it’s growing. Yeah. 

Boris
Absolutely. Same for us. We have been in this space for seven years and it’s great to see. You can definitely say that the industry is now having a little bit more visibility, like it’s a little bit more popular and people start to know that there are things like presentation agencies, that there are people that are specialised, as you mentioned, in this world of storytelling, in the world of presentation design, public speaking, part-delivery, part- etc.. 

Anyway, Heather, we’re not here for that. Let’s be very useful to whoever is listening to us, our audience are business people, arts, marketing people, salespeople, IT, designers, what have you. These are actually the same people that come also to our conference Present to Succeed. You have announced a new product that’s called Slidefinder, correct me if I’m wrong,. Tell us a little bit about what problem is this tool solving for those people, like what’s behind it. 

Heather
Yeah, this Slidefinder is a really exciting new product that we’ve just released and it’s solving a problem that every person in the presentation industry is faced with, which is finding their PowerPoint content, which wouldn’t be so hard. But, you know, if you use PowerPoint in particular, it’s a challenge and… But to understand Slidefinder let me tell you a little bit about how it came to be. 

So back in the day, the founders of TeamSlide, were actually consultants themselves. So day in and day out, they were designing PowerPoint decks, putting them together. That was their job. And they became super frustrated with trying to find their slides. You know, they knew they had the needle in the haystack, couldn’t find it. You know, it’s like buried. You couldn’t find it. I’m sure that’s something you’ve heard people struggle with in this area of work in this area. 

Boris
And if you think about it, there are quite some people that normally, and by default their behavior is to whenever they have to start a presentation, they actually are looking for something old that was created by someone else somewhere in the organisation so they can save a little bit of time. 

Heather
So yeah, exactly. Exactly. So yeah, that’s how TeamSlide came to be. And so, you know, fast forward to today and it’s been helping hundreds of people find their slides and just use PowerPoint more efficiently and use their time more efficiently.  

But then another problem came up this time from team slide users themselves. And they came to us and they said, hey, like, this is great, but we, we want to be able to find our personal slides in our cloud drives. So we said, all right, and, you know, worked on a new tool that would allow them to do just that, to reuse their PowerPoint content more efficiently. 

Boris
All right. So how does it work exactly? Like, can you use it as like, if you’re if you’re an individual user of PowerPoint, can you use it? Or you have to be like, that has to somehow be deployed throughout the organisation and that’s the only way, you know. 

Heather
So Slidefinder is great because first of all, it’s free on the Microsoft app source. And so anyone can just, like right now, go into the Microsoft app stores, download it and start searching for their slides. So it’s really that simple. 

Boris
Okay. And what about like can you deploy those on the corporate like on a corporate level? If I want to see if I want to see, for example, I don’t know, I’m looking for some marketing data and I’m in the tech team. Can I somehow search the slides of the marketing department also? 

Heather
Yeah. Yeah. So really that’s, that’s sort of how we set up TeamSlide to be, is more of like to be used by teams to find slides but you know, it connects to, Slidefinder connects to OneDrive and SharePoint. So if I was on a marketing team and I wanted to use it to connect to my marketing team’s SharePoint repository, I could do that. But really TeamSlide is more set up for the collaboration, whereas Slide finder is more for the individual and … 

Boris
It’s for individual user. All right. So, is it a, is it, does it require, like you said, that you can install it from the Microsoft store? So would that mean that’s like anyone can…? So I’m just thinking of, because many people in the corporate world, you probably know that they are not admins of their machines. And I’m like, would that be possible? Would they be able to download that and install it? Well, what are you seeing? Do you know or at least a little bit of data around that? Have you heard anything related to it, are people in the world of business freely able to decide to install it without asking the IT department to allow for it? 

Heather
Yeah, that’s, that’s an excellent consideration for sure. We have run into that occasionally with TeamSlide because TeamSlide, you know, it just has to connect just a little bit more in depth with your content. But with Slidefinder, we haven’t run into that issue yet. So I’m sure with some companies that are very, very, you know, you have to have permission to open the Internet, you know, like I’m sure that’s an issue for some, but widely it’s been it’s been fine for people to download. 

Boris
Okay so normally like if you’re not working a super restrictive kind of environment, this should work. And again, it’s in the Microsoft Store and not in Office. In the PowerPoint or the Office store, correct? 

Heather
Correct. Yeah, it’s I think they call it the Microsoft app source. So not app store, it’s app source. And you can just go on to that web… It’s like a website and you can just go right in there and search through their add-ins and you’ll see Slidefinder. 

Boris
All right. I was, I was even opening here some things on my end live so I can see something great. Yeah. You are right. So actually, I can already see it in front of me. So if you are listening to this one or if you’re watching this podcast, my view probably because I don’t see myself anymore. Probably there is a little bit more light right now in front of my face because I have PowerPoint opened in front of me. 

 So everyone that’s listening, watching. So if you go in a blank presentation, go to the Insert tab in the middle of it, there will be a button that says Get add-ins, right. And if you go there and click on the Store button to the right and you just type in Slidefinder, you have it, the first thing that shows up, first result in Google, I like Slidefinder by TeamSlides and you can just click and add it into PowerPoint. So it is that easy actually. 

Heather
Yeah. I’m glad you were able to find it easily. 

Boris
Yeah, super, super easy. Okay, so what is, how is it searching, like if I, is it searching the content on the slide itself? 

Heather
Okay. Yes. So it’s actually searching the text and notes that are connected to that slide. So it’s very useful. So it sort of works as like a search engine for your PowerPoint content. So it’s like Google for your PowerPoint content. 

Boris
So you are with this is kind of new… So you can search also the notes section. 

Heather
Well, you don’t choose to search it. That’s just how the algorithm works in the background. So  if I typed in ‘growth’ and I had connected to my SharePoint repository, it’ll search all my content for PowerPoint that is somehow has the word growth. 

Boris
Yeah, that’s nice. One, one quick one here. Is it just SharePoint and OneDrive enabled for now, the repository, or is for example, Dropbox or Google Drive idk or some other repository is also enabled for Slidefinder. 

Heather
Slide Finder is just for SharePoint in OneDrive right now. But TeamSlide does connect to Google Drive, Dropbox Box and you know, a lot more repositories. But Slidefinder is just a just for SharePoint and OneDrive. 

Boris
Brilliant. All right. So then that will be very useful to do. A lot of people, because I know that this sometimes it comes up as a question like, okay, but we are using I don’t know Dropbox, can we connect to Dropbox in a way, but normally what I see at least with our customers is that Office 365 is so dominant, and people are so like, there is just so many users and so many people using Office 365… OneDrive altogether with Office 365, that, yeah, I can imagine this is the best decision there obviously for sure. 

 So tell us a little bit more about like when did you announce that, when did you release it? 

Heather
Oh, we announced it maybe two or three weeks ago. And yeah, so it’s been very recent. So we we’re just trying to spread the word about it so people know. 

Boris
Brilliant. And do you have already some people that are testing it, some people that are already utilising it heavily? What are you hearing there? 

Heather
Yeah, definitely. We you know, it’s available for free. So we’re able to, you know, see how many people are downloading it and it’s gaining popularity. So that’s good news and we’re hearing good things about it. I mean, it’s it’s just so intuitive. People don’t really have issues with it. So that’s a good thing. And they’re able to just start searching within a few minutes of connecting to it. 

Boris
Yeah, brilliant. Again, one last on the Slidefinder part. Even though the plug for the two is now okay. Two or three weeks, we’re recording this it’s 25th of October. So okay, let’s say that it was announced in October 2022. All right. Even though it’s that early, even though it’s that new, is there like have you heard and can you say obviously, what are the plans for the tool in the upcoming months or in the future? Like, is there something that, you know, it’s coming, but it just requires a little bit of time. 

Heather
Uh, gosh, I, I honestly, I’m not sure if they have any plans to change it or anything, so I don’t have any, do-see story for you. 

Boris
Are all right. I’m, I’m just willing to, as always, because whenever there is something that’s behind the scenes, it always becomes like, will I, should I say it? Should I not? It’s always, always, always, always a consideration. All right. So in regards to the Slidefinder, obviously everyone that’s listening, you can find it on the App Store inside of PowerPoint, as I mentioned like 3 minutes ago. You can find it and download it for sure. If you download it, if you play with it, I’m sure that Heather would appreciate some comments, some feedback. You can just make sure that you send her those comments over LinkedIn or on their email. We’ll make sure that we put some emails in the show notes. But also, if you’re watching this on YouTube, make sure that you comment on the video and just make sure that you place your comments around. How is it, how was your experience with the tool.  

Heather, 16 minutes in, tell me more about like you are coming from outside of the presentation world like you spent quite some years in another industry. What are like back then or can you come up with the biggest presentation mistake, let’s put it this way, that you have seen in your previous career, like before joining the presentation industry, for sure you have seen so many presentations. 

Like if there is one thing that you are going to pinpoint and say, yeah, that was the I have seen this so many times, which, which is which is that one going to be? 

Heather
Yeah, that’s a great question. So I think the biggest mistake maybe that I’ve seen in the in this in a presentation is, you know, the classic – having a slide full of text when you’re presenting, like just loaded with text isn’t as much text as will fit on a PowerPoint. You know, and it’s distracting from the actual presentation. And you’re almost like, Should I write all that down? Or, you know, or should I maybe pay attention to what the person is saying? I think that’s then just kind of like a common mistake that I’ve seen. 

Boris
Yeah. And you’re based like we can see this normally, mainly in Europe because most of like 90% of our customers are here in Europe. And that is the still even today is like the default behavior I would say. 

Heather
Really? 

Boris
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. Unfortunately or fortunately. 

Heather
You’re trying to help them learn.  

Boris
Unfortunately for some, fortunately for others, it is the case. But I think that even when I was in the US for some conferences or trainings, I have seen the same approach, which means that this problem is like so widespread. Let, let’s put it this way, do you think, do you feel that like now coming from that  another industry to the presentation industry. Do you happen to see this problem less well?  

Heather
Definitely less. I think the people that we work with are really good at what they do. And, you know, so their slides look amazing and they’re exactly how you would want your slides to look like, you know. So I’d say I see it less now that I’m in the industry. I think it’s more so when someone gives a presentation and you know, they don’t really have the experience with creating decks and designing slides and all those things. 

Boris
All right. So happy to hear that. Happy to hear that this is becoming less and less, from hopefully out there in the world of business. Do you by the way, do you have somebody talking about this? Let’s go to the second to the last question here. We always ask our guests, who is that person that you kind of you have seen before or you have seen recently that, in the presentation industry or not, right. Maybe a business person who for some reason made a huge impression on you with the way they communicate, with the way they present. Who is that person so that we can have a person like that, so that we can try find them, chat with them, ask them to come here and join us on the podcast. Any name? Just one name, though. 

Heather
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. So the first name that comes to mind is Jesse Itzler. Have you ever heard of him? 

Boris
No, but I’m typing, writing now. 

Heather 

Okay. So he is actually here in Atlanta also, and he’s just this outstanding entrepreneur, author, presenter. He, you know, gives these really big keynote speeches and he’s very inspiring. If you watch any of his, you know, past speeches on YouTube, I mean, you’re going to be like, wow, I can go change the world.  

You didn’t. Jesse. J-e-s-s-e 

Boris
And the family name.  

Heather
Itzler 

Boris
It’s there. All right. All right. I think I found it. 

Yeah, I think I wrote it down correctly. So we are going to make sure that we also document the episode. Hopefully he will see this and let’s see how he reacts. Coming and receiving recommendations by someone without even knowing. Somewhere in the podcast. We’ll see. That is someone that we didn’t have on the podcast. We will try to get him here, especially if he is a great presenter and is doing that. That’s part of his work here.  

Heather, 22 minutes already in which like disappeared like that. One as we always ask a two-part kind of question at the end, what is the best place for people to connect with you in terms of social media network? Or you can say email. Of course, if you don’t like social media for some reason, which I kind. ..I don’t think so. If you’re in marketing and you are not into social media, it’s like, that’s interesting. So what is the ,what is a place where people can reach out to you and what is the best place for people to know more about Slidesfinder and TeamSlides. 

Heather
Yes. So you can find me on LinkedIn. My name is Heather Lammie and so you can find me on there. And then you can find TeamSlide at Teamslide.com. Really easy and you can find Slidefinder again in the app source or just in PowerPoint and clicking get add-in can find it on there or Teamslide.com/slidefinder. 

Boris
I’m writing down the teamslide.com, Slidefinder also and we’ll make sure that we, everyone we will make sure that we put all of those links in the show notes or in the description below. If you’re watching on YouTube. 

Heather, it’s almost, it’s almost we’re not close, but it’s almost half an hour. You see, this is even though this is one of the first bullet calls, at least for the presentation industries that you are invited in, I’m sure that you are going to get into. We have quite some podcasts in our industry, I would say, which is great. So probably you’ll end up not being in many of those at some point very, very soon. You see the time is flying by very, very quickly here. So thank you so much for joining and giving us that insight around Slide finder and the fact that it’s announced and the fact that it’s free and available to use to everyone. 

So thank you so much for joining and spending the time here. 

Heather
Thanks Boris. Thanks for having me. 

Boris
Everyone. You heard it from Heather. Slidefinder is free, so at least  you can go ahead and check it out, see how it works, see whether or not it’s saving you a lot of time or at least a little bit of time, probably to be quite some time, to be honest, and give her some feedback. 

Or again, write us your feedback in the show notes in the description below or in the comments or somewhere in social media, we’ll make sure that we are going to see and comment or send those comments to Heather if she missed it somehow. So again, thanks to Heather and everyone, thanks for listening. Thanks for tuning in. If you like the podcast, share it with a friend, subscribe to it, you know how to do this, those things.  

And if you still don’t know about Present to Succeed conference that’s coming on April 28th 2023. It’s switching into hybrid mode, will be in hybrid next year hopefully we’ll see you there and go and check it out. At presenttosucceed.com. Thanks again and everyone for listening and see you in the next one.