An experiment in light expression

I am getting to be a big fan of Slideshare - the online service which allows you to upload, share, tag, and download Powerpoint presentations using a very fast, engaging and usable interface.

What particularly excites me about the Slideshare interface is that it allows me to do very rapid, hyperlinked, keyword based trend analysis and learning - concepts and patterns and connections and trends form rapidly in my head.

In the desktop Powerpoint experience, I find my attention wandering because the plain Powerpoint UI backdrop doesn’t quite engage me - and the full screen Powerpoint is too attention demanding - you can only focus on it and nothing else on the desktop.
On the contrary, with Slideshare, I find my attention to be comfortably divided between the presentation at hand and the surrounding UI. I think the presentation mode is very compelling and fast, and it also seems to bring out the best in the authors of these presentations.

Perhaps, after years of seeing drab, soulless, templatized, over-worded corporate Powerpoints, most of the authors of good presentations on Slideshare have used this new medium to express their creativity. Also the community does a good job of generating interesting tags for the Powerpoint, which means that while viewing a certain presentation, you always have a nice ambient view of related presentations — always a boon for a hyperlinked-learning junkie like me.
Kudos to Rashmi Sinha and Jon Boutelle and their team on their continue brilliance and design touches within Slideshare.

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