Company: Brainshark, Inc., Waltham, MA
Entry Submitted By: Davies Murphy Group
Company Description: Brainshark provides the leading cloud-based software for creating, sharing and tracking online and mobile video presentations. Thousands of companies – including a third of the Fortune 100 – rely on Brainshark to increase the impact and reduce the cost of their sales, marketing, training and HR communications. For more information, visit www.brainshark.com.
Nomination Category: Products & Product Management Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: New Product or Service of the Year - Software - Mobile On-Demand Application

Nomination Title: Brainshark’s SlideShark App

Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 525 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and performance to date:

It can be your personal assistant. It can help find your way when you’re lost. But the iPhone – for all its innovation – can’t show or project PowerPoints. Not without major distortions, that is.              
             
Given the iPhone’s strong traction in business – with 93% of the Fortune 500 deploying or testing the device, according to Apple – this was a problem that needed to be addressed. PowerPoint is the #1 business presentation tool, with more than 30 million presentations created daily, per Microsoft. Being able to deliver formal or impromptu presentations – using a  device that’s always at hand – would make life easier for sales reps, trainers and mobile professionals across industries, and help companies make the most of their iPhone investments.
                           
Enter SlideShark, the industry standard for presenting PowerPoint on iOS devices. SlideShark launched in October 2011 (solving this same problem for iPad users), and in September 2012, SlideShark for iPhone debuted.              
             
Now, iPhone users can:    
        
• Show PowerPoints with fonts, animations, graphics, hyperlinks and videos intact.             
• Project presentations to a larger screen/TV with an HDMI or VGA cable or through Apple AirPlay.             
• Zoom in and out by “pinching.”             
• Share links to online presentations.             
• Track views of presentations via email alerts and detailed online reporting.       
• Download content for offline viewing.             
• Use the iPhone as a remote control and laser pointer when projecting from the iPad.             
             
With the ability to distribute, track and manage content in the cloud, SlideShark is much more than a PowerPoint viewer. Brainshark’s developers introduce new features monthly – with recent additions enabling users to import PowerPoints from Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Syncplicity and SkyDrive into their secure, cloud-based accounts.             
             
Setting a rapid pace of innovation, Brainshark continues to introduce new SlideShark features, based on the needs of users. One new (March 26), key addition is the ability to “broadcast” a presentation. Mobile presenters can now invite meeting attendees – across the table or across the globe – to view their presentation, as it’s being delivered live over the Web. When someone can’t attend a meeting, they can still follow along! Attendees can tune in from any Internet-connected device – viewing slides as they’re advanced in real time, animations as they appear, drawings made by the presenter and more. Presenters, meanwhile, maintain control over the content and cadence of the meeting. Afterward, they get detailed reports on who joined and when, as well as data on the broadcast itself – how long it lasted, which presentation(s) and slides were shown, how much time was spent on each slide, etc.             
             
A top 10 “Productivity App” in Apple’s App Store, SlideShark continues to garner strong demand – as users, media (InformationWeek, Inc., Forbes, USA Today, etc.) and analysts (Gartner, Forrester, Wainhouse Research, SiriusDecisions, etc.) give it positive reviews. The app has a rating of 4.5+ stars out of 5 in the App Store, based on thousands of user reviews. With individual and corporate users (including NASA!) in more than 140 countries and 1.4+ million downloads (2 downloads/min., 24x7!), SlideShark has also been honored with more than a dozen awards.

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Provide a brief (up to 125 words) biography about the leader(s) of the team that developed this nominated product or service:

To meet the needs of iPhone users around the world – enabling them to properly and professionally show  PowerPoints from their iOS devices – Brainshark developed SlideShark using internal resources. Brainshark staff who collaborated to build, test and promote the SlideShark iPhone app include members of the product management, engineering, development and quality assurance (QA), design, IT, technical support, marketing and executive teams. Brainshark also solicited feedback from usability testers inside and outside of the organization.

Key individuals from Brainshark included:

• Joe Gustafson, CEO
• Greg Flynn, President
• Chris Caruso, CTO
• Andy Zimmerman, CMO
• Lisa Johnson, VP of SlideShark Marketing
• David Klein, Senior Product Director

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