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Business Idea - Web Based Replacement For Power Point

A drawing of a lightbulb with the bulb part colored in yellow to indicate it's on

I've been in my fair share of meetings where a Power Point presentation was the key focus. Even if print outs are provided, you'll often here attendees asking if the presenter can e-mail them a copy of the Power Point file. Sometimes the info in the presentation is enough to stand on its own, but often it falls flat when taken away from the talking points of the presenter. This got me thinking about another approach to the display portion of a presentation that could be called "WebPoints" or something like that.

The basic idea would be something like this:

  • Instead of using a desktop application like Power Point, a browser would be used to create the presentation via a web application that provides the same basic layout tools.

  • In addition to the core presentation, talking points and notes can be added to each page as well.

  • When the presentation is being given, the talking points would be turned off, but when attendees come back to the web app, they would have the option to see the notes as well as the main presentation pages.

  • There could even be discussion board type functionality built in so that there would be an ongoing discussion for each individual page or the presentation as a whole.

Other features could include:

  • The ability to export either the presentation, or the presentation and its notes to a PDF or other file. Among other things, this would ensure that the presentation could be given even if it was on a computer without access to the web site.

  • For conference calls, the web site could sync what page is being shown to multiple locations. This way the presenter could control the display for everyone instead of trying to constantly try to ensure everyone is looking at the same page or having to install something like WebEx to provide the functionality.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are already services like this out there, but if there aren't, it is something worth exploring. The overall setup of a system like this wouldn't require a tremendous amount of development. The biggest obstacle would be in creating a nice interface for creating the pages in the web app. Of course, it could just take images as uploads. Or, better yet, just ingest an existing Power Point and convert it directly.