SlideMagic Blog

Students can get free access to SlideMagic Pro. The signup and validation process is no longer cumbersome, you can get started straight from the pricing page:

In spreadsheets or databases, things should be clearly labeled. Every column has a heading that describes what’s in it. When it comes to slide design, you can allow yourself a bit more freedom. Look at the 2 slides below

In the second slide, I omitted detailed descriptions of data that is probably clear to the audience, and grouped things together in one box. Easier on the eye.

Dream Studio uses machine learning to create images based on sentences and keywords a user enters. Unlike searching for an image based on a keyword in a big data base with tagged pictures, Dream Studio would generate pixels from scratch. Some results are stunning, others have surprising errors (faces that are not finished for example).

You can also mix and match art styles (the image below is a mix up of Mondriaan and Van Gogh).

At the moment these type of services are a gimmick. People try a few creations, share them, and move on. But in a few years from now, this might be the way image “databases” work. No need for that database anymore as photographs are created on the fly,

(Another similar service is DALL-E, but it has a waiting list)

This is a nice Twitter thread:

1. Polyptoton The repeated use of words with the same root, like destroy, destroyer, and destroyed.
2. Anadiplosis The repetition of the last word of a clause at the beginning of the next.
3. Anaphora The use of the same word or words at the start of successive clauses or sentences.
4. Epizeuxis The immediate repetition of a word or phrase.
5. Epanalepsis The repetition of a word at the start and end of a clause.
6. Antithesis The use (and contrast) of two opposing ideas in a single clause or sentence.
7. Aysndeton The omission of a conjunction (e.g. and, or) from a series of related clauses.
8. Anastrophe The inversion of normal word order.

Read through the entire thread by @culturaltutor to see examples.

Students are eligible for a completely free SlideMagic Pro subscription, and I have now automated the validation process for a number of markets:

• Austria
• Denmark
• France
• Italy
• Germany
• Spain
• Sweden
• The Netherlands
• Turkey

After you have registered a free account with SlideMagic, you can visit this link to start the validation process. If your account is based in one of the above countries you get instant approval. Clicking the “I am a student” button will take you to the login page of the university or school you are currently studying at. After a successful login, your SlideMagic Pro subscription will automatically be switched on.

For other countries, we are still using a partly manual approval process.

All this was made possible through a partnership with InAcademia. If you run a web site that needs student validation it is worth checking them out.

It is hard to communicate an idea for a new song without the help of the full band.

• When you play the basic idea on one instrument to someone else, that person misses the context that it is in your head: the result a few bland chords in an obvious sequence.
• The same can happen to you. You had that brilliant idea, but when you get back to your note book the next day, the scribbles sound like a few bland chords in an obvious sequence.

The same is true for your presentation. Your audience is missing the context that is in your head, and the slides / your story is the only thing they can rely on.

A nice video by Adam Neely who talks about stage fright from a musician’s perpsective:

In some cases, an investor might take a meeting or call with zero chance of investing. The investor liked you, the investor is returning a favor to a friend….

The opening sentence of the meeting is likely just that: ‘Zero percent chance that I will invest” followed by a pretty good reason “You are a medical device company, and I only invest in drugs”.

After such an opening, some startups might still try. The result: still no investment, and an investor who is slightly annoyed and cuts the meeting short.

It is better to change objective, and see where this person could actually be helpful.

Celebrity investors often joke that if your pitch cannot fit into a napkin, the pitch must be bad. This is feedback from a super famous investor, who receives dozens of pitches each day, gets pitched everywhere she goes. Yes, if you happen to bump into this investor in the corridor, launch into a 30 minute pitch and get cut off after 45 seconds, you are probably not good at adjusting the pitch to the environment you are in.

Each presentation setting is different. If you meet the celebrity investor’s team in a follow up meeting, and you give a super high level, superficial pitch that is over in 1 minute, you will not have scored many points to get you to meeting 3….

SlideMagic Pro (including PowerPoint and PDF conversions) will be available free for students! I have just updated the web site and its pricing page. To apply, create a free account, verify your email, and visit www.slidemagic.com/web/student. At the moment, application processing is partly manual, but in a week from now, the automated system will go live, where students from certain countries can directly log in to the web site of their academic institutions, after which SlideMagic Pro gets turned on instantly. Watch this space.