snagIt, tagIt, sell it to the butcher in the store

So in the interest of finally assembling the presentation I am doing on Web 2.0 for a conference in November, I bought a copy of SnagIt so that I can make the niftiest possible slides for the powerpoint.  I just watched as many of the short tutorial videos as I could assimilate in one sitting (i.e., most of them), and I can hardly wait to get started.  Of course I only saved one copy to my desktop at work, so wait I must.

I’ve been ruminating and cogitating on this presentation for weeks now, writing outline after outline, brushing up my photoshop skills, and practicing witty one-liners in the car.  My main difficulty has been striking the right balance of enthusiasm and moderate skepticism about how web 2.0 tools can be applied to nonprofits. 

The key, I think, is to present the material not as a cheerleader (“isn’t that neat?!”) but as a source of information on items that might or might not be a good fit for their organization, with some basic introductory material that they can then investigate and assess on their own. 

I plan to present just a few tools that nonprofits might use in furthering their communications goals (the workshop that I am asked to be a part of is supposed to cover Developing and Implementing Your Communication Plan), so I will be focusing on that aspect of things, rather than, say, fundraising with web 2.0.

So I’ve pared it down to the things I know best, keeping in mind the level of familiarity and comfort that I expect my audience to have:  blogs (personal and organizational), photosharing (flickr), RSS, and wikis.  I only have 20 minutes, so that is more than enough.

The conference isn’t until early November, but I’ve got so much travel scheduled between now and then that I will only feel comfortable if I get this “in the can” by late next week, so this will be my main after-hours project for about the next ten days.  What’s going to be really exciting is that almost all of the travel I will be doing is related to this work — conferences and podcamps, and the like — so I imagine I will just keep wanting to add more as I go along.  If the presentation is already “finished” (like anything is ever really finished), then I will be less likely to succumb to the temptation to add extraneous nonsense and louse it all up.

It’s been a very steep learning curve these last couple of weeks, and I am so glad to have found the resources I needed, exactly when I needed them.  SnagIt was just one — I have also gotten lots of great ideas and help from some of the sideshows on Slideshare, espeially everything tagged nptech.

OK, maybe not everything on that page.  But the way my eyeballs felt after a solid 12 hours of doing research on Saturday, you would think that I had watched them all.   I am nothing if not a completist.

I also heard today that a consultant I had been hoping to lure over to a project of mine is interested and is putting together a proposal, so hooray! for progress and getting the right people to play on your kickball team!