by Tony Rushin
SlideShare is a free website that gathers all of the best Powerpoint, PDF and Keynote presentations and lets you view them quickly and easily. It has been described as the YouTube for slide decks. Anyone can post their presentation to it and many do so. It has about 58 million viewers each month and was voted among the World’s Top 10 tools for education and e-learning.
I’m an avid consumer of SlideShare content. My role at Network 1 allows me to connect people, understand important technology trends and inform and teach our clients – mainly law firms and medical practices – in the Atlanta business community. SlideShare is one of my main sources of new ideas and information.
I have known about SlideShare for years, but I didn’t consistently start using it (or perusing it in my case) until earlier in 2013. I’m always sensitive about investing my time with applications or on-line services. Is it high-value? Will it be around in three years (anyone remember Myspace)? Will it continue to grow and be even more valuable to me in the future?
Two things happened in the last year that got me using SlideShare consistently:
1). My Vistage chair, Larry Hart, spoke highly about the value he got out of the content.
2). LinkedIn purchased SlideShare.
Other advantages of SlideShare:
- It is free (there are premium services available but the basic service is all I’ve ever needed)
- Account set-up is a breeze at www.slideshare.net
- It is integrated into LinkedIn.
Slideshare has given me ideas that spark changes in my world! It’s helped me learn good questions to ask vendors or partners I’m working with, find ideas to share with a law firm client, and round out my thinking by getting alternative viewpoints on a topic. Let it work for you!
Below are examples of the useful content I have pulled from SlideShare:
