_{That’s hello in One of the many Australian Aboriginal languages. Why this one? As you will see, today is about storytelling, and the Australian Aboriginal culture supposedly has the oldest oral storytelling tradition.}

Some of you might know that the idea behind StreamAlive was born from attending 56 live online classes on “writing and marketing a book” and seeing how broken live audience engagement is, especially online. This story is also mentioned on our website.

The book I was writing at the time is called “Name, Place, Animal, Thing.” It’s about giving better answers when people ask you “So, What do you do?” Answers that go beyond what it says on the most recent designation on your LinkedIn profile.

I believe the lessons in my book are especially relevant in today’s time and age.

With AI writing stories, it’s all the more important that the lived experience is captured and told. Stories keep us human.

In a crazy case of (work) life meets art…

I’m launching a workshop. It’s called StoryMining. Name, Place, Animal, Thing is the basis for this.

I continue to hear friends say they don’t have stories when I know for a fact that they do. Sometimes I remember more stories about them than they do about themselves.

I realized that there are many amazing storytelling workshops. But, there aren’t many for mining those stories in the first place. And, Name, Place, Animal, Thing is a great framework for doing so.

This is especially important as AI can write stories, but it can’t write your story.

I’m launching StoryMining with a free super-interactive workshop next week, followed by a paid one the week after, that will also be a masterclass in online engagement.

Both are on Maven, the course platform. I’d love to see you there - for the free one, at least. Links below…

• Free session: 45 minutes - Tue 8 Sep, 11am - 11.45am EST

Do sign up for the free one, even if you can’t attend live (you’ll get a recording).

• Paid workshop: 4 hours - Sat 19 Sep, 10am–2pm EST

If you do join this, make sure you use this code for a discount: UNMUTE

I can assure you that these will be the most interactive workshops you have ever attended. Needless to say, I will liberally be using StreamAlive to ensure this.

If you know companies or teams who can benefit from telling better stories, please tell them about StoryMining.

In other news…

On Wednesday, September 9th, join us for this free event hosted by our friends at Virtual Approval (click image to register). I will be presenting alongside Rachel and the team there

While on the subject of events…remember the Astro 250 event I told you about last week?

It went off really, really well. We were their cosmic engagement sponsors/partners, and they used us in many sessions. I ran a workshop, too, on using StreamAlive for STEM education, and it went off really well, if I may say so myself.

We will be at TechLearn in Austin in September. I’ll be representing StreamAlive there, having been selected as part of their startup spotlight.

Let me know if you’re going to be there.

Live every week.

We spoke to many of our users. In fact, we asked you in previous versions of this newsletter, and many of you indicated that you prefer public AMA sessions to one-on-one sessions to help you with all things StreamAlive. We have that and lots more.

Many of our AMAs will be hosted by me Tina, my co-founder. And every Monday we will be going live with the usual suspects, some of our power users, and experts on all things live.

Not the coming Monday, though. I’ll be at the US Open, taking in my annual single-day dose of tennis.

See the full calendar here

Hope to see you soon on one of the many live sessions.

Boorda
_{(“See you soon” in Noongar, one of the many aboriginal languages)}

Lux and the StreamAlive team
Still 100% human-written with ❤️

_{That’s hello in Ukrainian, and a little hat tip to our friends at Svitlo School, who have a graduation event tomorrow (Aug 27). Attendees will be in person and online (like me), and StreamAlive is proud to help make it engaging with the tech in the able hands of StreamAlive partner, Virtual Approval}

I’ve been spaced out this week. In fact, a lot of our team have. In a good way.

Read on, especially if you’d like to attend an amazing event for free.

We’re thrilled to partner with our friends at the Astro Society, short for the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

They have an amazing conference starting tomorrow. It’s fully virtual, and the fantastic team at Astro Society are huge believers in dialogues > monologues. Fortunately for us, they discovered StreamAlive (thanks Shanil), and the rest, as they say, is history. We are proud to be cosmic sponsors of this amazing event. To know more, click on the image above.

The timing is pretty significant. And it’s not just about astronomy in the 250th year of American independence. Here’s what’s happening….

Almost everybody has heard of the Hubble Telescope. You may also have heard of Nancy Grace Roman, who is known as the “mother of Hubble” and NASA’s first Chief of Astronomy. Well, NASA’s newest telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (NGRST in short) scheduled to launch into space on August 30th, less than a week from today.

Here is more on this fantastic endeavor and testament to human ingenuity. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and astrophysics.

While the (rest of the) conference charges a nominal fee, the following event on Day One is absolutely free to the public.

You might want to bring your kids along for this one. Inspiration guaranteed.

On Friday, my co-founder, Tina, and I will be joining Shanil to speak on

From Zoom Fatigue to Active Learning: Transforming Online STEM Teaching with StreamAlive

As a reward for making it this far, I want to let you know that our friends at Astro Society have given us a couple of conference passes for our StreamAlive friends. These are each worth $195 each, if memory serves me right.

If you’re interested and are absolutely sure you’ll go, just reply back letting me know. If you’re strapped for time, simply write “cosmic” in your mail, and tomorrow at 8 am EST, we’ll spin a wheel (of course) to pick three lucky winners. I’ll personally email you by 10am EST on Thursday, Aug 27 -if you won.

Oh, and while we are talking about being live…

We will also be at TechLearn in Austin in September. I’ll be representing StreamAlive there, having been selected as part of their startup spotlight.

Let me know if you’re going to be there.

Live every week.

We spoke to many of our users. In fact, we asked you in previous versions of this newsletter, and many of you indicated that you prefer public AMA sessions to one-on-one sessions to help you with all things StreamAlive. We have that and lots more.

Many of our AMAs will be hosted by me Tina, my co-founder. And every Monday we will be going live with the usual suspects, some of our power users, and experts on all things live.

See the full calendar here

Hope to see you soon on one of the many live sessions.

Do pobachennya.
(Ukranian for :until we meet again”)

Lux and the StreamAlive team
Still 100% human-written with ❤️

👋🏽 Lux here.

It’s been a spectacular week, one that reminded me that life is indeed alive, whether virtual and online or in person.

Met up with various friends over the weekend, went for America’s largest free music festival, and tomorrow, I’m looking forward to watching Weird Al Yankovic live - he’s someone who made me laugh through my childhood, and continues to do so even today. Parodies are beautiful. And we need more ‘funny’ in our lives.

Speaking of live…

The textrovert effect - 2,249 comments by 225 people.

Last month we did a session with Training Magazine, which, if we may say so myself, went off really well. The room was super engaged, and at peak we had almost four comments a second. You can watch the recording here.

Or you can watch me do it live again exclusively for our StreamAlive community this Wednesday. This is a model for engagement that is applicable whether you run training sessions, community events, webinars, or any one-to-many presentation. We’ve been getting excellent feedback on its applicability to all kinds of live sessions.

Sign up for the session. It's free.

While we are talking about being live…

We, at StreamAlive, are now live every day.

(Starting 12PM EST today)

We spoke to many of our users. In fact, we asked you in previous versions of this newsletter, and many of you indicated that you prefer public AMA sessions to one-on-one sessions to help you with all things StreamAlive. We have that and lots more. (Almost) Every single weekday.

Many of our AMAs will be hosted by me Tina, my co-founder. And every Monday we will be going live with the usual suspects, some of our power users, and experts on all things live. In fact, today we will be on LinkedIn live and many other platforms talking about slides and our PowerPoint slides will respond in real time to the chat.

See the full calendar here

Oh, and we’ve made some helpful UI changes that cue how StreamAlive can work inside PowerPoint, Gamma, Canva, etc., and with easy links to our calendar. Do log in to check it.

Hope to see you soon on one of the many live sessions.

Adios.

Lux and the StreamAlive team
Still 100% human-written with ❤️

👋🏽 Lux here again.

I’m still giddy with excitement about everything happening, and I’m not even talking about the football (soccer, as some call it) world cup.

I’ve been playing around with video. As a visual product with visual interactions at the core of our user experience, we should be putting more video out.

Without further ado, this week’s newsletter is three videos and three buttons…

The Textrovert Effect - it’s today! Will I see you there?

Here’s a preview of all my slides, 40% of which are listening slides powered by (of course) StreamAlive. I will be presenting using Gamma on Zoom. It will be crazy interactive with quizzes, spinners, conversations, and yes, some very usable models on how to engage audiences.

Signups are through the roof so far, and assuming a standard 30% show-up rate, we should be having a few hundred people attending.

Sign up, it's still free.

In a webinar far, far away

On Star Wars Day (May the 4th), I’d teased an upcoming feature in a post on LinkedIn. This new interaction just went into production. Tamely (IMHO) called “End Credits”, it’s a great way to acknowledge the attendees who made your session a conversation. Anyone who participated in the chat will be acknowledged automatically. Here is a preview.

Try it for yourself.

Ice, Ice, baby

I have always loved the verbal dexterity and rhythm in this song. In fact, two startups ago, as part of marketing efforts at a data backup software company where I was a co-founder, we had created a parody video that caught the eye of Amazon Web Services at that time. I had to use an animation team, hire a rapper, rent a studio, and write the lyrics myself (of course). Today, all of those would be done by AI. How far we’ve come. Here’s the video of “Cloud Cloud Maybe”, if you’re interested.

Back to ice — icebreakers, rather. My colleagues in the marketing team have been busy creating usable decks containing interactions. Our recent integration with Gamma has proven the best ‘vessel’ to showcase these, so here’s the first of those on icebreakers. Let us know if you find this useful, and we’ll make even more of them.

Get the full deck for free.

I hope to see you in a few hours at the Trading Magazine webinar. Here’s the link, once again

That’s it with the videos

Adios.

Lux and the StreamAlive team
Still 100% human-written with ❤️

👋🏽 Hey, it’s Lux Narayan, co-founder and CEO at StreamAlive. Peter has lost his voice. Quite literally.

Unfortunately, he’s down with tonsillitis and is taking a break from the written voice as well. I’m sure he is guzzling hot water and honey and horrible-tasting cough medicine. ("It tastes awful. And it works." was a classic - from my days in advertising)

I thought I’d seize this opportunity to to hijack our newsletter and share an event I’m very, very, very pumped 💪🏼 about. Details below 👇👇👇

I’ve been working for a couple of months now on this whole thesis called The Textrovert Effect and associated mnemonics and the metaphor of a ladder.

It’s now evolved into a pretty useful (in my opinion and some folks who’ve seen it) framework. I will be presenting an uber-interactive version of this next week, and I’d like to personally invite you to sign up.

It’s free and it’s hosted by the Training Magazine Network. I’m not sure how much capacity they have in their digital rooms, so please do sign up soon if you’re planning to.

Here’s what one participant, an instructional technology specialist, said after experiencing an early test version of The Textrovert Effect / Ladder:

“The Textrovert Ladder was an incredibly engaging session. I appreciated how StreamAlive enhanced participation rather than being the sole focus. It felt like I was interacting with Lux and my fellow participants rather than a computer.

Additionally, the Textrovert Ladder Framework was tangible and relevant. I’m already looking at future sessions I will run and how I can tweak them to align with the framework.”

I just posted about the upcoming free event on LinkedIn. Click the image below 👇 for all details — including the link. While you’re on LinkedIn — please do follow / connect. People say I post interesting, educational, and weird stuff.

(Yes I love using em—dashes, and no, it’s not AI. Click pic below for details)

While I have you here and while on the subject of LinkedIn, here’s what I’ll be talking about in the next few days (and here’s my LinkedIn profile).

Tomorrow I’ll be posting about our amazing time at the US Distance Learning Association (USDLA) annual conference in Cleveland. Details include how, as a result of (my) sheer stupidity, our car had to be towed on the way there.

Later this week, I’ll share updates on the stimulating and enriching work we’re doing with Svitlo, a school in Ukraine that, for obvious reasons, was forced to go online on Zoom, and now provides education and community to over 3,000 students. StreamAlive fully supports the team at Svitlo in every way possible.

I’ll also be very vocal about our opinion on the usage of QR codes for engagement in online sessions. Unfortunately, trainers, educators, facilitators, and presenters had no other choice earlier, but now they do.

Finally, I’m thrilled to share that I’ve been going live on LinkedIn every Monday (four weeks so far) with a motley crew of fellow presentation and engagement enthusiasts.

It’s been loads of fun, and next week we’ll be talking about how to end a session.

Lots of people talk about how to start a session — icebreakers and stuff. Not many people talk about great ways to end a session. That’s exactly what we’ll be doing.

Details on my LinkedIn profile.

Before post-tonsilitis Peter jumps in and wrestles back control of our newsletter…

I look forward to connecting on LinkedIn, seeing you at the training magazine webinar, and hopefully catching you on LinkedIn live and other places where I will be live. Stay tuned, there’s a lot of live plans starting this month.

Oh, and feel free to reply. Say hi. I read and respond to every single reply. It also helps me get cred points to hijack our newsletter again in the future.

Thanks for being here.

Stay well.

Lux and the StreamAlive team

Still 100% human-written with ❤️

In this newsletter:

Four Ultra-Engaging Events you can sign up for free.

Just look for the highlighted text below.

• Pay per event: Give us your thoughts

• Jumping cats and dogs: How to leverage textroverts to boost engagement

• Mass distraction: Use in-context engagement to fight distractions

• Leveraging the textroverts: Give a voice to the too-shy-to-speak

• Certified: Become a human engagement specialist

Pay per event?

While talking to people at the Gamma event something that came up a few times was being able to pay in advance for a set number of events, like “6 events in the next 6 months”.

Curious, is that something you’d be interested in over monthly or annual plans?

Got more to say? Tell us in the forum.

Introducing the textrovert ladder

Lux will share a step-by-step framework that move people from silent observation to meaningful contribution — without forcing awkward “everyone must speak now” moments.

If you’re looking for practical ways to engage quieter participants - while having a lot fun - this session is for you.

Save my seat

Sign up for the free event here (it’s on Monday!)

Oh yes, and there will be cats and dogs jumping on the stairs in this session.

It’s our new, favorite engagement hack to get everyone to pay attention in your virtual sessions.

It’s going to be a busy Monday for Lux. Soon after the dogs and cats session, he’ll be talking about StreamAlive brand-new Gamma integration. This will be part of our usual routine: Monday LinkedIn live session with Neil, Martin, Said, and others.

Join us on LinkedIn Live. It will be fun (it’s also on Monday!)

Weapons of mass distraction

Every distance learning educator wants the same thing: a room where every learner is present, participating, and in sync. But we've accidentally built an arsenal that destroys it. Every time we send learners to a polling app, a reaction tool, or a Q&A platform, we tell them to pick up their phones. And the phone is the original weapon of mass distraction.

Join Lux for this free webinar hosted by the US Distance Learning Association where you’ll learn what in-context engagement looks like when it lives inside the session instead of fragmenting out of it

Save my Seat!

Leveraging the textrovert effect to boost engagement

Most virtual training sessions treat the chat window as a sidebar. A place for “got it” and the occasional link. The Textrovert Effect is the discovery that it can be something else entirely: the most powerful participation channel in the room.

Join Lux in this free session hosted by Training Magazine and learn how to:

• Understand the Textrovert Effect and design sessions where everyone contributes

• Build a framework for when, how, and what to ask in the chat

• Use AI to surface and respond to participant insight in real time

• Transform your Zoom or Teams chat from a logistics channel into the

Save my seat!

Join the community discussion

StreamAlive has a community where you can ask questions and get best practice advice on running your virtual sessions. Here are some discussions to get you started.

• Should you open your Zoom session early for early joiners or wait?

• Do breakout rooms facilitate engagement or inhibit it?

• What’s the most participants you’ve had on a Zoom call?

We’d love to welcome you to the community and hear about the virtual sessions that you run.

Get your human engagement specialist certificate

Well done to everyone who has completed their Human Engagement Specialist certificate so far!

If you missed it…

We’ve signed up with Certifier.com to issue Human Engagement Specialist certificates based on a 15-minute training session with StreamAlive.

You get a unique page that you can use to showcase your credentials.

And you can even add it to your LinkedIn profile like I’ve done below.

What you get

✓ 15-minute live setup session with our team - we'll show you exactly how to run StreamAlive in your next training
✓ The one question that makes audiences engage (we've tested it on 200+ sessions)
✓ Certified Human Engagement Specialist credential you can add to your LinkedIn

How to get your certificate?

We’ve got 8 slots available this month for you to get your certificate. All you need to do is book your 15-minute call with us.

Get your certificate

The best sessions can 10x your engagement. The top 5% of StreamAlive users are the ones who spent at least 15 minutes speaking to one of us.

​Catch us on our social pages

If you haven’t already, check out our social media pages to stay updated on our quirky takes on the latest social media trends and the occasional piece of engagement-related advice.

All the best,

Peter and the StreamAlive team
100% human-written with ❤️

In this newsletter:

• AI Summaries: Order from the chat chaos

• Textroverts: How to leverage textroverts to boost engagement

• Mass distraction: Use in-context engagement to fight distractions

• Audiences unmuted: Join our livestream turning engagement theory into action

• Certified: Become a human engagement specialist

Did you know?

This week we’d love to know if knew that you could summarize the chat responses in real-time during your live session using the AI summary option?

If you answered ‘No’ then check out this post in our community.

Leveraging the textrovert effect to boost engagement

Most virtual training sessions treat the chat window as a sidebar. A place for "got it" and the occasional link. The Textrovert Effect is the discovery that it can be something else entirely: the most powerful participation channel in the room.

Join Lux in this free session hosted by Training Magazine and learn how to:

• Understand the Textrovert Effect and design sessions where everyone contributes

• Build a framework for when, how, and what to ask in the chat

• Use AI to surface and respond to participant insight in real time

• Transform your Zoom or Teams chat from a logistics channel into the

Save my seat!

Weapons of mass distraction

Every distance learning educator wants the same thing: a room where every learner is present, participating, and in sync. But we've accidentally built an arsenal that destroys it. Every time we send learners to a polling app, a reaction tool, or a Q&A platform, we tell them to pick up their phones. And the phone is the original weapon of mass distraction.

Join Lux for this free webinar hosted by the US Distance Learning Association where you’ll learn what in-context engagement looks like when it lives inside the session instead of fragmenting out of it

Save my Seat!

LIVE: Unmuting the audience

On June 1st (that’s Monday), a group of virtual presentation experts will be going live to talk StreamAlive, virtual presenting, and presentation tech.

Join Lux, Said, Neil, and Martin as they show you what it takes to put on an interesting, engaging, and ad-libbed live stream.

It’s the live show where video and tech professionals stop theorising about audience engagement and do it in real time.

• 12 noon EST | 4pm GMT | 9:30pm IST

Join the livestream!

Join the community discussion

StreamAlive has a community where you can ask questions and get best practice advice on running your virtual sessions. Here are some discussions to get you started.

• Should you open your Zoom session early for early joiners or wait?

• Do breakout rooms facilitate engagement or inhibit it?

• What’s the most participants you’ve had on a Zoom call?

We’d love to welcome you to the community and hear about the virtual sessions that you run.

Get your human engagement specialist certificate

Well done to everyone who has completed their Human Engagement Specialist certificate so far!

If you missed it…

We’ve signed up with Certifier.com to issue Human Engagement Specialist certificates based on a 15-minute training session with StreamAlive.

You get a unique page that you can use to showcase your credentials.

And you can even add it to your LinkedIn profile like I’ve done below.

What you get

✓ 15-minute live setup session with our team - we'll show you exactly how to run StreamAlive in your next training
✓ The one question that makes audiences engage (we've tested it on 200+ sessions)
✓ Certified Human Engagement Specialist credential you can add to your LinkedIn

How to get your certificate?

We’ve got 8 slots available this month for you to get your certificate. All you need to do is book your 15-minute call with us.

Get your certificate

The best sessions can 10x your engagement. The top 5% of StreamAlive users are the ones who spent at least 15 minutes speaking to one of us.

​Catch us on our social pages

If you haven’t already, check out our social media pages to stay updated on our quirky takes on the latest social media trends and the occasional piece of engagement-related advice.

All the best,

Peter and the StreamAlive team
100% human-written with ❤️

In this newsletter:

• Secondary interactions: The follow-on interactions you didn’t know you needed

• UNLIMITED: Yes, our pricing plans updated again, now with unlimited options

• 50+ New Themes: No more excuses for boring looking interactions

• Certified: Become a human engagement specialist

Did you know?

Just quickly, we’re curious if you knew about secondary interactions that you can run based on your first interaction (like a poll)?

If you answered ‘No’ then check out this post in our community.

New UNLIMITED participants pricing plans

As we learn more about StreamAlive’s users, we make changes to the pricing options, while always allowing current paid users to keep their existing subscriptions if they don’t want to change.

Our latest pricing change is about giving our users certainty and clarity.

You now get UNLIMITED participants on any payment plan.

(Oh, and 50+ themes on the lowest price plan!)

Historically we’ve always priced based on the number of participants you have in your chat. Why? Because that’s what our competitors did and we believed that paying for what you use was the best approach.

We learned that capping participants introduces some anxiety for people that might have a big event coming up, so we removed it and changed the usage to the number of live sessions you plan to run in a month.

As always, we review our pricing plans, but honor whatever paid plan you are on until you decide to cancel your subscription.

50+ New themes

Along with the new pricing plans, we’ve also rolled out over 50 new themes that you can use to customize how your interactions look.

Some of the themes even come with animations and motion backgrounds which really make your interactions pop out of your screen.

Find out more on the Themes page of the StreamAlive app.

Join the community discussion

StreamAlive has a community where you can ask questions and get best practice advice on running your virtual sessions. Here are some discussions to get you started.

• Should you open your Zoom session early for early joiners or wait?

• Do breakout rooms facilitate engagement or inhibit it?

• What’s the most participants you’ve had on a Zoom call?

We’d love to welcome you to the community and hear about the virtual sessions that you run.

Get your human engagement specialist certificate

Well done to everyone who has completed their Human Engagement Specialist certificate so far!

If you missed it…

We’ve signed up with Certifier.com to issue Human Engagement Specialist certificates based on a 15-minute training session with StreamAlive.

You get a unique page that you can use to showcase your credentials.

And you can even add it to your LinkedIn profile like I’ve done below.

What you get

✓ 15-minute live setup session with our team - we'll show you exactly how to run StreamAlive in your next training
✓ The one question that makes audiences engage (we've tested it on 200+ sessions)
✓ Certified Human Engagement Specialist credential you can add to your LinkedIn

How to get your certificate?

We’ve got 8 slots available this month for you to get your certificate. All you need to do is book your 15-minute call with us.

Get your certificate

The best sessions can 10x your engagement. The top 5% of StreamAlive users are the ones who spent at least 15 minutes speaking to one of us.

​Catch us on our social pages

If you haven’t already, check out our social media pages to stay updated on our quirky takes on the latest social media trends and the occasional piece of engagement-related advice.

All the best,

Peter and the StreamAlive team
100% human-written with ❤️

This is one of those emails that as a founder you hope you never have to write, but nevertheless we have to be transparent about what’s happened to many of our users over the last couple of days.

First, I’d like to apologize to everyone who has been affected by unsolicited emails that have been sent from StreamAlive. I know how frustrating and confusing it is for you, and I’m deeply sorry.

Here’s what happened

At around 8am Eastern Time we started receiving messages from users saying that they are getting spam and phishing emails coming from StreamAlive but are being sent by random email addresses.

Other messages reported that they were receiving complaint emails from random people who wanted to be taken off the StreamAlive email list.

Naturally this is hugely concerning for us and we immediately investigated what was going on.

We narrowed the cause down to our Mailgun account which is an email delivery system that we use.

The system was accessed and used to send a large volume of emails to our users. The way the attack was orchestrated was for messages to be sent between contacts, which may have looked like emails coming from other users.

What this means for you

• You may have received a large number of unexpected or duplicate emails

• Your email address may have appeared as the sender of some messages

• You may have received emails from confused people asking to be removed

To be clear:

Your email address has not been compromised or hijacked.

The attacker used StreamAlive’s email to send the email and made it look like it was coming from someone else’s email. All the messages were sent through the Mailgun system using StreamAlive’s infrastructure, not your mailbox.

No other details were exposed to the hacker except your email address.

What we’ve done

We were able to shut this attack down and secure our Mailgun account.

• Removed all user emails from Mailgun

• Disabled all outbound email sending

• Removed all API keys

• Rotated all API keys in other tools

We’re also working closely with Mailgun to understand exactly how the attacker was able to access our Mailgun account and SMTP email server, and ensure that it can’t happen again.

Where things stand

The attack has been contained, and no further emails are being sent.

At this stage, we have no evidence that any systems beyond our 3rd party email delivery setup were accessed. We’re continuing to investigate and will share a further update once we have a definitive root cause.

We know this isn’t the kind of experience you expect from us, and I’m so very sorry for the disruption it caused.

We’re taking this seriously and putting additional safeguards in place so that even if something like this were attempted again, it hopefully wouldn’t be possible.

If you have any questions or concerns, just reply to this email and we’ll get back to you.

Thanks for your patience,

Lux Narayan
CEO & Co-Founder
StreamAlive

In this newsletter:

• Digital presence: The Digital Stage Summit is free and taking place now

• Community: Check out the latest discussion in the StreamAlive community

• Certified: Become a human engagement specialist

Free Expert-Led Strategies to Grow Your Digital Presence

The Digital Stage Summit is currently taking place today and for the next two days.

They have an amazing line-up of speakers, including some notable StreamAlive users like Neil Farrimond, Martin McKenna, and Tatiana Rodriguez. It’s completely free to attend all the virtual sessions so get a wriggle on and grab your ticket.

On Wednesday (that’s tomorrow or today or yesterday, depending on when you’re reading this) our very own Lux Narayan will be taking to the digital stage for his talk on The Textrovert Effect.

It builds on the premise that we’ve seen time and again. You might have extroverts in your room, you might have introverts, but one thing everyone has in common is that they are a textrovert.

Grab your free ticket

Join the community discussion

StreamAlive has a community where you can ask questions and get best practice advise on running your virtual sessions. Here are some discussions to get you started.

• Should you open your Zoom session early for early joiners or wait?

• Do breakout rooms facilitate engagement or inhibit it?

• What’s the most participants you’ve had on a Zoom call?

We’d love to welcome you in the community and hear about the virtual sessions that you run.

Get your human engagement specialist certificate

Well done to everyone who has completed their Human Engagement Specialist certificate so far!

If you missed it…

We’ve signed up with Certifier.com to issue Human Engagement Specialist certificates based on a 15-minute training session with StreamAlive.

You get a unique page that you can use to showcase your credentials.

And you can even add it to your LinkedIn profile like I’ve done below.

What you get

✓ 15-minute live setup session with our team - we'll show you exactly how to run StreamAlive in your next training
✓ The one question that makes audiences engage (we've tested it on 200+ sessions)
✓ Certified Human Engagement Specialist credential you can add to your LinkedIn

How to get your certificate?

We’ve got 8 slots available this month for you to get your certificate. All you need to do is book your 15 minute call with us.

Get your certificate

The best sessions can 10x your engagement. The top 5% of StreamAlive users are the ones who spent at least 15 minutes speaking to one of us.

​Catch us on our social pages

If you haven’t already, check out our social media pages to stay updated on our quirky takes on the latest social media trends and the occasional piece of engagement-related advice.

All the best,

Peter and the StreamAlive team
100% human-written with ❤️

In this newsletter:

• Movies: Join our Oscars quiz on LinkedIn live on Friday

• Community: Check out the latest discussion in the StreamAlive community

• Certified: Become a human engagement specialist

Lights, camera… interaction

The Oscars are this Sunday — so we’re kicking off the weekend with a live movie quiz on LinkedIn.

It’s out chance to use the new Kahoot-like quiz interaction that we announced a couple of weeks ago and showcase it to everyone in a live session.

Join us this Friday for a short interactive session where we’ll test your knowledge of:

• Famous films

• Oscar winners

• Iconic movie quotes

You’ll be able to answer directly in the LinkedIn comments, and StreamAlive will show the results live during the stream - all without QR codes.

It’s a fun way to see how interactive live sessions can be — and to find out if you’re secretly a movie trivia champion.

📅 Friday @ 10am EST | 3pm GMT | 7:30pm IST
⏱️ ~15 minutes
📍 LinkedIn Live

Join the live Oscars quiz

Join the community discussion

StreamAlive has a community where you can ask questions and get best practice advise on running your virtual sessions. Here are some discussions to get you started.

• What’s the most participants you’ve had on a Zoom call?

• Is there any such thing as too many monitors when hosting Zoom sessions?

• When should you address audience questions in a Zoom session?

We’d love to welcome you in the community and hear about the virtual sessions that you run.

Get your human engagement specialist certificate

Well done to everyone who completed their Human Engagement Specialist certificate last week

If you missed it…

We’ve signed up with Certifier.com to issue Human Engagement Specialist certificates based on a 15-minute training session with StreamAlive.

You get a unique page that you can use to showcase your credentials.

And you can even add it to your LinkedIn profile like I’ve done below.

What you get

✓ 15-minute live setup session with our team - we'll show you exactly how to run StreamAlive in your next training
✓ The one question that makes audiences engage (we've tested it on 200+ sessions)
✓ Certified Human Engagement Specialist credential you can add to your LinkedIn

How to get your certificate?

We’ve got 15 slots available this month for you to get your certificate. All you need to do is book your 15 minute call with us.

Get your certificate

The best sessions can 10x your engagement. The top 5% of StreamAlive users are the ones who spent at least 15 minutes speaking to one of us.

​Catch us on our social pages

If you haven’t already, check out our social media pages to stay updated on our quirky takes on the latest social media trends and the occasional piece of engagement-related advice.

All the best,

Peter and the StreamAlive team
100% human-written with ❤️

In this newsletter:

• Quizzes: Revamped quiz interactions with new points feature

• Cameras: 5 ways to encourage participants to turn on their cameras

• Certified: Become a human engagement specialist

Quizzes gets a refresh

We’ve completely revamped our quiz interaction with new animations, new sounds, and new points system.

Faster responses, more points

Set how many points people get if they are quickest to answer the questions. This encourages people to type quickly rather than waiting to see what the majority answers are or what other people are typing into the chat.

Fun, new sounds

We’ve added new sounds to the quiz such as a high tension background track as the clock counts down. There are new sounds for when the question loads and when the time is up.

The new quiz features are available to everyone (even on a free plan, although it’s restricted to the first 5 participants).

Login to create a quiz

5 ways to encourage people to turn on their camera in a virtual session

A couple of weeks ago Gwyn Wansbrough sent a newsletter to her subscribers with advice that I think affects every virtual presenter: how to encourage participants to turn on their camera.

With her permission, I’ve reproduced the tips from her newsletter below because I think they apply to everyone running a virtual session.

1/ Give a heads-up​
Let people know beforehand that it’s a “cameras on” session, and explain why that matters. “We’ll be doing breakout groups where certain exercises will require us to see each other.”

2/ Build trust early​
Create psychological safety before you ask people to be visible. Invite people to connect for a few minutes before the session. Start with a warm welcome, ease people in, and engage early.

3/ Make it playful​
Start with a “cameras on and off” warm-up. For example, “Turn your camera on if you’ve had coffee today.” (Yes, this works surprisingly well.)

To get the final two tips, head over to Gwyn’s newsletter (don’t forget to subscribe for more weekly tips from Gwyn!).

Read Gwyn's newsletter

Get your human engagement specialist certificate

We looked at the engagement metrics of our users who booked a call with us vs those that didn’t.

The numbers are crazy (in a good way).

People that took a 15-20 minute human-led demo of StreamAlive saw 6-10x the amount of engagement in the chat because they knew how to use what interaction and when.

If all it takes is a 15-20 minute call to see that kind of engagement we decided to create a certificate for you to show off your new knowledge and skills.

Here’s how you get your own certificate like the one below:

We’ve signed up with Certifier.com to issue the certificates. You get a unique page that you can use to showcase your credentials.

You can click a button on your certificate page to add it to your LinkedIn profile and share it with your network.

And once it’s added, it’ll show up in your licenses & certifications section on your LinkedIn profile, along with any other professional certificates you’ve added.

Why get certified?

Why the credential? Because in the age of AI-generated training, knowing how to capture and amplify authentic human voices isn’t optional anymore. It’s the moat.

This isn’t product training. It’s positioning yourself as someone who knows how to make AI work for human connection, not against it.

What you get

✓ 15-minute live setup session with our team - we'll show you exactly how to run StreamAlive in your next training
✓ The one question that makes audiences engage (we've tested it on 200+ sessions)
✓ Certified Human Engagement Specialist credential you can add to your LinkedIn

How to get your certificate?

We’ve got another 25 slots available this month for you to get your certificate. All you need to do is book your 15 minute call with us.

Get your certificate

The best sessions can 10x your engagement. The top 5% of StreamAlive users are the ones who spent at least 15 minutes speaking to one of us.

​Catch us on our social pages

If you haven’t already, check out our social media pages to stay updated on our quirky takes on the latest social media trends and the occasional piece of engagement-related advice.

All the best,

Peter and the StreamAlive team
100% human-written with ❤️

In this newsletter:

• Enabler: Why AI is here to enhance your virtual training, not replace it

• Get certified: Become a human engagement specialist

The future of virtual training is AI, but don’t let that scare you

It’s a rough time to be a virtual trainer right now. The anxiety and fear that people have about the future of training is understandable.

That’s why we’re shouting from the rooftops about humans teach humans better, and humans learn better from other humans.

One thing that we can’t change is that AI will be a part of virtual training.

The best trainers right now are the ones that are leveraging AI to deliver more impactful virtual training sessions. It’s being used to enhance their delivery, not replace it.

In fact, those trainers are positively excited about the future of AI in virtual training.

For example, when you want to give everyone a voice, you can’t just unmute the microphones, but you CAN ask people to type it in the chat. And when there are so many messages in the chat you CAN get a sense of what everyone is saying by using AI.

That’s exactly how StreamAlive’s AI helps to enhance virtual training sessions where the trainer can synthesize dozens of voices into clear summaries.

It doesn’t replace the human trainer, but it enhances their session and enables possibilities that weren’t available before AI.

See what happens when your chat is on fire.

👇

You have loads of people giving you their opinions, and then you can use AI to quickly summarize the chat and discover the key themes and opinions.

Because AI is going to be such an important skill for virtual trainers in the future, we’ve signed up with Certifier.com to create a certification for the modern trainer.

Get your human engagement specialist certificate

We looked at the engagement metrics of our users who booked a call with us vs those that didn’t.

The numbers are crazy (in a good way).

People that took a 15-20 minute human-led demo demo of StreamAlive saw 6-10x the amount of engagement in the chat because they knew how to use what interaction and when.

If all it takes is a 15-20 minute call to see that kind of engagement we decided to create a certificate for you to show off your new knowledge and skills.

Here’s how you get your own certificate like the one below:

We’ve signed up with Certifier.com to issue the certificates. You get a unique page that you can use to showcase your credentials.

You can click a button on your certificate page to add it to your LinkedIn profile and share it with your network.

And once it’s added, it’ll show up in your licenses & certifications section on your LinkedIn profile, along with any other professional certificates you’ve added.

Why get certified?

Why the credential? Because in the age of AI-generated training, knowing how to capture and amplify authentic human voices isn’t optional anymore. It’s the moat.

This isn’t product training. It’s positioning yourself as someone who knows how to make AI work for human connection, not against it.

What you get

✓ 15-minute live setup session with our team - we'll show you exactly how to run StreamAlive in your next training
✓ The one question that makes audiences engage (we've tested it on 200+ sessions)
✓ Certified Human Engagement Specialist credential you can add to your LinkedIn

How to get your certificate?

We’re opening 25 slots over the next 10 days for you to get your certificate. All you need to do is book your 15 minute call with us.

Get your certificate

The best sessions can 10x your engagement. The top 5% of StreamAlive users are the ones who spent at least 15 minutes speaking to one of us.

​Catch us on our social pages

If you haven’t already, check out our social media pages to stay updated on our quirky takes on the latest social media trends and the occasional piece of engagement-related advice.

All the best,

Peter and the StreamAlive team
100% human-written with ❤️

In this newsletter:

• Survey says: Virtual trainers love AI!

• Get Animated: Testing out animated backgrounds in interactions

• Interactive PowerPoint: Add StreamAlive to your PowerPoint slides

Getting your thoughts on AI in teaching

Last week, at our event on Virtual Trainer’s day, we asked the audience how excited they were about AI in training, and honestly, we were a little surprised.

Call us conservative, but we were expecting the room of 30+ virtual trainers to tell us that AI in training is dangerous and will affect learning outcomes, but in fact the opposite was true.

Most of you told us that you are extremely excited about AI helping you with your virtual training sessions.

We then asked what part of being a trainer can AI never replace and we received tons of suggestions in the chat.

Luckily, StreamAlive’s own AI was on hand to provide some structure when the whole room was talking. Here’s a summary of what people said that AI couldn’t replace.

Most people agreed that the following couldn’t be replaced by AI in training:

• A human connection with empathy and genuine interaction

• Personalized support when a learner needs individual attention

• Being able to read the room with emotional intelligence

• Incorporating humor and sensitivity into the training

By the way, last week we asked you what format you learn best from, and most of you told us that you prefer live sessions with a human trainer. Hopefully this message reaches the corporate bean counters!

Thanks to everyone who joined us last week, we appreciate you joining us and giving us your thoughts!

Animated backgrounds for your interactions

Our lead product designer has been working on a side project recently to bring animated backgrounds to your interactions. It’s still in a exploratory phase at the moment but if you like what you see then please tell us!

StreamAlive for PowerPoint is ready to install!

Last month we released StreamAlive’s PowerPoint add-in. We’re thankful for all the feedback we’ve had so far and made dozens of updates over the holidays to improve it even further.

It’s completely free to install for all PowerPoint users right now. Your plan limits and benefits will apply as before. Think of the add-in as another vessel to consume StreamAlive from!

Install StreamAlive on PowerPoint

Install StreamAlive's app for PowerPoint

​Catch us on our social pages

If you haven’t already, check out our social media pages to stay updated on our quirky takes on the latest social media trends and the occasional piece of engagement-related advice.

Follow StreamAlive for the latest news

All the best,

Peter and the StreamAlive team
100% human-written with ❤️

In this newsletter:

• Celebrating: It’s Virtual Trainers Day today!

Virtual trainers are more important than ever

It’s Virtual Trainers day today where we celebrate the behind the scenes and on-camera hard work that virtual trainers bring day in and day out.

When everything is AI this and AI that, it’s important to not lose sight of the fact that there’s no substitute for humans teaching humans and that humans learn better from other humans.

We’re inviting you to join us today for a 22 minute Zoom call at 2:22pm GMT (9:22am EST) where we’ll ask the audience some open ended questions to create a manifesto of what it means to be a virtual trainer and how important it is to have a human in the loop when in comes to training.

Join for 22 minutes

​Some of the questions we’ll explore

• ​What do participants usually do during your sessions when you’re not asking them something?

• ​Where has AI already changed how you design or deliver training?

• ​What part of being a trainer should AI never replace?

• ​If your slides could actually listen, what would you want them to hear?

You’re welcome to participate anonymously or put your name on it.

The manifesto will be published and promoted across the training industry.

It’s just 22 minutes. All you need to be able to do is type in the chat to submit your answers.

We’re looking forward to having you join us!

StreamAlive for PowerPoint is ready to install!

Last month we released StreamAlive’s PowerPoint add-in. We’re thankful for all the feedback we’ve had so far and made dozens of updates over the holidays to improve it even further.

It’s completely free to install for all PowerPoint users right now.

Install StreamAlive on PowerPoint

(Ask your email client to display images if you don’t see any images below!)

Install StreamAlive's app for PowerPoint

New (and lower!) pricing plans

Just a quick heads up that we revised our pricing plans last week. They are lower than ever AND we bundled in branding on the entry-level tier because so many of you told us that it is important.

We do constantly review and iterate our pricing but if you subscribe today then you are locked in and protected from any price increases in the future.

​Catch us on our social pages

If you haven’t already, check out our social media pages to stay updated on our quirky takes on the latest social media trends and the occasional piece of engagement-related advice.

Follow StreamAlive for the latest news

All the best,

Peter and the StreamAlive team
100% human-written with ❤️

In this newsletter:

• Celebrating: It’s Virtual Trainers Day on Feb 2nd

• Roll call: StreamAlive is hosting an event celebrating virtual trainers

• Install: PowerPoint gets its biggest upgrade in 38 years

• Pricing: Our new (lower) pricing is live

Virtual Trainers Day is on Feb 2nd

In the age of AI for everything, one thing that has not changed is humans teaching humans and humans learning from other humans.

It’s not about the material on the slide deck. It’s about the connection between the teacher and the students, and the students between each other, that an AI can’t do.

It’s about knowing how to read a room, when to press ahead or when to hit the brakes and focus on a particular topic. It’s about judgement, timing, presence, and listening.

To take it to the extreme: how many parents would be happy for their kids to go to school where they look at slides and watch videos all day in the name of “learning”.

Yet, we know that this is what a lot of companies are doing when it comes to their most valuable asset: training their employees.

Virtual Trainers Day celebrates the invisible work that trainers do to make virtual sessions look effortless, when we know it’s not.

It’s a simple public marker that says: Your work matters, and it will always be human work.

StreamAlive will be celebrating Virtual Training Day on Monday

On Feb 2, at 2:22pm GMT (9:22am EST) virtual trainers from around the world will gather for a short, focused live session to listen to one another and reflect on what this profession really looks like right now.

🗓️February 2nd, 2026
⌚2:22pm GMT | 9:22am EST

​It’s a 22-minute live roll call where trainers respond in chat to a small set of thoughtful, open-ended questions, and the room is summarized visually in real time.

Join the roll call

​What this session really is

This is a 22-minute working session where virtual trainers will co-create a short public statement about what this profession actually is in the age of AI.

The output will be shared afterwards, and if you participate, you can choose to have your name listed as a co-creator.

You’re not an attendee, you’re a contributor.

What to expect

22 minutes, live on Zoom.

This isn’t a teaching or selling session but a few thoughtful questions for the audience and real-time visual summaries of what the group says.

Participants can also share links they genuinely use. We’ll curate and share those afterwards.

Why you should attend

If you join, you help shape the document that comes out of this, and you can choose to put your name on it.

If you believe humans teach humans better, this is your chance to help put that belief into words.

Stand up and say “Humans teach humans better”. We’d love to see you on Monday!

Join the roll call

StreamAlive for PowerPoint is ready to install!

Last month we released StreamAlive’s PowerPoint add-in. We’re thankful for all the feedback we’ve had so far and made dozens of updates over the holidays to improve it even further.

It’s completely free to install for all PowerPoint users right now.

Install StreamAlive on PowerPoint

(Ask your email client to display images if you don’t see any images below!)

Install StreamAlive's app for PowerPoint

New (and lower!) pricing plans

Just a quick heads up that we revised our pricing plans last week. They are lower than ever AND we bundled in branding on the entry-level tier because so many of you told us that it is important.

We do constantly review and iterate our pricing but if you subscribe today then you are locked in and protected from any price increases in the future.

​Catch us on our social pages

If you haven’t already, check out our social media pages to stay updated on our quirky takes on the latest social media trends and the occasional piece of engagement-related advice.

Follow StreamAlive for the latest news

All the best,

Peter and the StreamAlive team
100% human-written with ❤️

In this newsletter:

• Money talks: We’re updating our pricing next week (in a good way)

• Install: PowerPoint gets its biggest upgrade in 38 years

• Cool: StreamAlive helps summarize your meeting chat

New pricing plans being rolled out soon

Earlier we asked you for your feedback on StreamAlive’s pricing plans. We were eager to know what was important to you and what you could live without.

Many of you told us that a hybrid plan, a combination of a low cost subscription with the ability to pay extra when you needed it, would be more valuable than a flat monthly or annual subscription.

We’ve put our heads together and run our new plans past our Alpha group (our top users and biggest evangelists) who gave their thumbs up on Monday.

Here’s what the new plans will look like, we’re giving you a sneak preview before it goes live on our website next week.

Some of the key changes:

1. Reduced monthly pricing

2. Branding now available on the lower tier plans

3. Introducing participant credits because nothing hurts more than paying for a buffet and just having the salad. Many of you shared that the lowest tier allowed more usage than you needed. A cheaper tier with lower usage would be better. You got it.

4. Buy extra participant credits if you run out

5. ‘Bank’ unused participant credits on monthly plans up to two months (eg. If you used 40 of your 100 credits, you can roll over 60 credits to use within the next two months). Annual plans are best - get the whole year’s credits upfront.

6. Increased AI tokens for generating questions from a prompt, scanning your PPT to generate questions from your content, analyzing the chat and turning it into word clouds, summaries, and images, etc.

Old pricing

Just for comparison, this is what our existing plans look like:

You’ve got questions, we’ve got the answers!

When will these new plans be ready?

We’re planning to go live next week (final date to be decided).

What if I want to stay on my existing monthly or annual plan?

If you want continue on your existing plan you are free to do so.

Will my existing subscription change to a new plan when it renews?

No, you’ll continue on your existing plan for as long as you wish to do so, but you can email hi@streamalive.com if you want to switch to a new annual plan.

I’m on an annual plan, can I switch to the new annual plan?

Please email hi@streamalive.com from the email you registered with on StreamAlive to let us know that you are interested in switching.

I have a question not answered here 🤔

Shoot us an email hi@streamalive.com and we’ll get back to you right away!

StreamAlive for PowerPoint is ready to install!

Last month we released StreamAlive’s PowerPoint add-in. We’re thankful for all the feedback we’ve had so far and made dozens of updates over the holidays to improve it even further.

It’s completely free to install for all PowerPoint users right now.

Install StreamAlive on PowerPoint

(Ask your email client to display images if you don’t see any images below!)

Install StreamAlive's app for PowerPoint

Summarize your chat in seconds

When the conversation is flowing in the chat it can be difficult to make sense of what the overall sentiment or thoughts are.

That’s where StreamAlive’s AI comes in.

When you use interactions like Talking Tiles or Transient Thoughts or Wonder Words, a simple button click and turn hundreds of chat messages into a quick, clear summary.

Just click the light bulb icon during your live session to generate a full summary of the text. You’ll get:

• Highlights: An overview of the themes and topics your audience spoke about

• Popular opinions: If there was a theme that many people spoke about or had a consensus on, it would get mentioned here

• Alternative voices: If there were any contrarian takes on the popular opinions, they would get highlighted

• Notable quotes: If something quite profound was said by an audience member, it would get picked up

As always, we’d love to know your feedback in our community!

​Catch us on our social pages

If you haven’t already, check out our social media pages to stay updated on our quirky takes on the latest social media trends and the occasional piece of engagement-related advice.

Follow StreamAlive for the latest news

All the best,

Peter and the StreamAlive team
100% human-written with ❤️

In this newsletter:

• Live: PowerPoint gets its biggest upgrade in 38 years

• Support: We’d love your support with our ProductHunt launch!

• Cool: StreamAlive helps summarize your meeting chat

StreamAlive for PowerPoint is ready to install!

38 years ago, Robert Gaskins changed the way businesses, teachers, and speakers presented their material.

Today, with our new PowerPoint add-in, StreamAlive is turning those presentation monologues into dialogues with your audience.

It’s completely free to install for all PowerPoint users right now.

Install StreamAlive on PowerPoint

Here’s a quick look at what you get and how it works.

(Ask your email client to display images if you don’t see any images below!)

You have over a dozen interactions to choose from, like Word Clouds, polls, spinner wheels, and interactive maps

And other interactions like rating polls, multiple choice questions, and quizzes.

You can even pick up questions from the chat and have your PowerPoint deck display your audience questions on one your slides.

And it’s all powered by the chat of your meeting platform. All your audience has to do is type it in the chat.

There’s plenty of AI inside as well to speed up your workflows. My favorite is the ability to scan your PPT slides and automatically come up with interactions based on the content!

Install StreamAlive's app for PowerPoint

Our PPT add-in is live on Product Hunt

Although we stopped worrying about ProductHunt launches long ago, we still get a rush when we see our hard work getting votes and generating interesting comments.

If you are able to support our launch today, we’d be forever thankful!

A word about the launch from Lux

Lux talks more about why we built the StreamAlive app for PowerPoint over on LinkedIn.

Summarize your chat in seconds

When the conversation is flowing in the chat it can be difficult to make sense of what the overall sentiment or thoughts are.

That’s where StreamAlive’s AI comes in.

When you use interactions like Talking Tiles or Transient Thoughts or Wonder Words, a simple button click and turn hundreds of chat messages into a quick, clear summary.

Just click the light bulb icon during your live session to generate a full summary of the text. You’ll get:

• Highlights: An overview of the themes and topics your audience spoke about

• Popular opinions: If there was a theme that many people spoke about or had a consensus on, it would get mentioned here

• Alternative voices: If there were any contrarian takes on the popular opinions, they would get highlighted

• Notable quotes: If something quite profound was said by an audience member, it would get picked up

As always, we’d love to know your feedback in our community!

​Catch us on our social pages

If you haven’t already, check out our social media pages to stay updated on our quirky takes on the latest social media trends and the occasional piece of engagement-related advice.

Follow StreamAlive for the latest news

All the best,

Peter and the StreamAlive team
100% human-written with ❤️

In this newsletter:

• Learn: PowerPoint gets its biggest upgrade in 38 years

• Pricing: We’re thinking about adding a pay as you go plan

• Cool: StreamAlive helps summarize your meeting chat

PowerPoint gets its biggest upgrade in 38 years

38 years ago, Robert Gaskins changed the way businesses, teachers, and speakers presented their material.

Next week, we’re going to show you the biggest change PowerPoint has seen since it’s launch.

We think it’s so big, we emailed the inventor of PowerPoint to let him know about what we were building - and he replied! 😍

To learn how to create interactive PowerPoint slides with polls, word clouds, interactive maps, spinner wheels, and more, join our live workshops this week.

• Present on Zoom? Register here

• Present on Teams? Register here

We’ll explore how to turn static presentations into real-time, two-way conversations. Whether you’re leading a webinar, a client pitch, or an internal meeting, discover how to bring your audience into the story and keep them engaged from the very first slide.

💡 What You’ll Learn

​​🔹 How to make your slides interactive, without changing your workflow
🔹 Ways to involve your audience live, even with cameras off
🔹 Techniques to boost engagement inside your deck (not outside it)
🔹 How to turn passive viewers into active participants in real time

It’s happening TODAY and Thursday

🗓️9th December (Zoom) & 11th December (Teams)
⌚11am EST | 4pm GMT | 9:30pm IST
🌍 On Zoom & Teams (Yes, presentations on Zoom can be fun!)

Save my seat!

Can’t make it? Register now and we’ll send you the recording

We need to talk about StreamAlive’s pricing

We’d like to hear from you on how we can make StreamAlive’s pricing better.

Currently we have three plans, based around the number of commenters that can participate in each interaction and how many AI credits you use.

We’d love to know what’s most important to you when using StreamAlive.

• Number of commenters?

• Team users?

• Number of live sessions per month you can use StreamAlive in?

• Reporting history?

• Platform choice?

• Themes and branding?

We’re considering whether a pay as you go usage-based pricing model (also known as consumption-based pricing) would be better for everyone.

This means you only pay when you have a live session where you want to use StreamAlive.

If we were to implement a pay as you go plan, there are several ways we could do this:

1. Charge a flat fee per event (with more than two commenters)

2. Charge per number of commenters

3. Charge per number of interactions (polls, word clouds, spinner wheels, etc.)

4. Charge per number of AI credits used

5. Something else?

We’d love to get your input by voting in these polls.

If you have longer or more specific thoughts on StreamAlive’s pricing plan and ways that we can improve it, we’d love to hear your feedback.

Just reply to this email or submit a comment!

Summarize your chat in seconds

When the conversation is flowing in the chat it can be difficult to make sense of what the overall sentiment or thoughts are.

That’s where StreamAlive’s AI comes in.

When you use interactions like Talking Tiles or Transient Thoughts or Wonder Words, a simple button click and turn hundreds of chat messages into a quick, clear summary.

Just click the light bulb icon during your live session to generate a full summary of the text. You’ll get:

• Highlights: An overview of the themes and topics your audience spoke about

• Popular opinions: If there was a theme that many people spoke about or had a consensus on, it would get mentioned here

• Alternative voices: If there were any contrarian takes on the popular opinions, they would get highlighted

• Notable quotes: If something quite profound was said by an audience member, it would get picked up

As always, we’d love to know your feedback in our community!

​Catch us on our social pages

If you haven’t already, check out our social media pages to stay updated on our quirky takes on the latest social media trends and the occasional piece of engagement-related advice.

Follow StreamAlive for the latest news

All the best,

Peter and the StreamAlive team
100% human-written with ❤️

In this newsletter:

• Learn: Take your virtual meetings from wow to holy s**t

• Skill: Beat the average high score in our trainer’s arcade game

• Fate: Pick a tarot card and discover the fate of your next live session

• Cool: StreamAlive helps summarize your meeting chat

Join Said’s incredible (and free) StreamAlive training

Here’s how most virtual sessions look on Zoom or Teams when they use StreamAlive…

Now here’s how StreamAlive looks in Said’s virtual sessions…

If you’ve ever wondered (or wished) to make your virtual sessions MORE than just a talking head or more than just a PowerPoint deck, then you need to sign up for Said’s next (free) training session.

He’ll be introducing the Fit For Facilitation community to StreamAlive. It’s a fantastic, fast-growing community with many amazing and generous facilitators. Oh, and it’s free to join.

For this session, we’ve heard that Said plans to keep it simple for starters, and so as not to overwhelm first-time users….but might pull out the stops if you ask him nicely.

🗓️ Wednesday, 26th November
⌚11am EST | 4pm GMT | 9:30pm IST

Save your seat!

Wait, who’s Said again?

Said is like you, a user (albeit a power user) of StreamAlive who wants to help you make more engaging and visually appealing live sessions. He is the founder of the Facilitainer. He is also a believer in the value of engagement, and an (unpaid) ambassador for the product. 🙏🏽

Can you get a higher score than 573?

Last week we announced our new arcade game for trainers.

Hundreds of you played and while it’s easy to get started it’s difficult to master.

That’s why the average score so far is just 573.

Can you do better?

Play TRAINSTORM

Easter egg: If you hit a certain 4 digit high score, you can win some StreamAlive merch!

Throwback to when we launched Tarot Cards for trainers

A few months back we launched the Tarot Cards for trainers. It’s a fun way to discover what fate has in store for your next live session.

From WiFi gremlins to all participant cameras being switched on.

Will the cards predict what will happen in your next event?

Pick your first Tarot card

Summarize your chat in seconds

When the conversation is flowing in the chat it can be difficult to make sense of what the overall sentiment or thoughts are.

That’s where StreamAlive’s AI comes in.

When you use interactions like Talking Tiles or Transient Thoughts or Wonder Words, a simple button click and turn hundreds of chat messages into a quick, clear summary.

Just click the light bulb icon during your live session to generate a full summary of the text. You’ll get:

• Highlights: An overview of the themes and topics your audience spoke about

• Popular opinions: If there was a theme that many people spoke about or had a consensus on, it would get mentioned here

• Alternative voices: If there were any contrarian takes on the popular opinions, they would get highlighted

• Notable quotes: If something quite profound was said by an audience member, it would get picked up

As always, we’d love to know your feedback in our community!

​Catch us on our social pages

If you haven’t already, check out our social media pages to stay updated on our quirky takes on the latest social media trends and the occasional piece of engagement-related advice.

Follow StreamAlive for the latest news

All the best,

Peter and the StreamAlive team
100% human-written with ❤️