The Project

A few months ago, my boss at work asked for all of us to each make a powerpoint of one of the applets on our web portal. The powerpoint would describe where the data behind it came from, how it got updated, the I/T processes involved, and how they mapped to what was displayed in the applet.

That was my first experience with powerpoint. Having been with IBM for so long, I was used to Lotus Freelance Graphics. So I took the opportunity to explore exactly what bells and whistles powerpoint offered, and ended up making the presentation a parody of Star Wars with animated screen crawls, integrated music, laser beams, explosions, etc.

I was scared to death to show it to my boss, but she just about died laughing, and when it came time to show it for real, mine was the only one that didn't require someone to stand there and explain each slide and click the mouse to move through the presentation.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, she was bragging on me and my powerpoint skills to her boss, and he asked her if I could work on a presentation for him to take to India to show to our offshore contractors. She agreed, and I met with him to see what he wanted.

Well, it turns out it's not powerpoint at all, because the presentation is already complete. What he wanted is three videos to embed in the presentation. I enthusiastically volunteered to put together the video for him.

Last week, we shot video of our headquarters buildings and also of some of our stores, and I am in the process of editing them, and it's going really well. I had a basic knowledge of how to edit already, but I have learned on the job this week. This has been fun, and I hope it makes a good impression on my upper management bosses.

Now I have to go through a bunch of elevator music to put in the videos.