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 ❤️

In this newsletter:

• Learn: Changing the way you do your next presentation

• Skill: Try to keep your audience awake!

• Tips: Last call to submit your presentation tips for our new book!

• Results: We asked you what your preferred presentation tool is

Let’s change the way you do your PowerPoint presentations

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 Tuesday and Thursday

🗓️18th November (Zoom) & 20th November (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

Stop your audience falling asleep

We’ve built a new game.

It’s dedicated to the trainers and presenters who face daily challenges to keep their audiences engaged, involved, and attentive.

Inspired by the arcade games of the 80s, you have to stop your audience from falling asleep.

To do that you have to collect unmuted microphones, switched on cameras, and find special StreamAlive Power Ups to boost your score.

Play TRAINSTORM

As you collect more points you get promoted from Trainer in Training to Galactic Training Jedi.

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

For the nerds 🤓 among you, we used Cursor to vibe code the game in Javascript, and our designer came up with the simple graphics.

Last Call! 50 tips to being a better virtual presenter

At the end of this month (November), we’re publishing a book on 50 tips to being a better virtual presenter.

We’ve had the who’s who of presenters, facilitators, educators, and live streamers submit their tips to help you become a better virtual presenter.

We’ve still got a few spaces left, so if you’ve got a tip that you’ve learned from all your virtual presenting experience, we’d love to include it in the book!

Submit a virtual presenting tip!

All submissions come with your name and mention of your company and/or LinkedIn profile.

This is the last call to submit your tip(s).

Your preferred presentation tool

Last week we asked you want your preferred presentation tool was.

Thank you to all 14 of you who voted 🤗

(want to vote? click here)

While not enough votes to be statistically significant, we were surprised to see Canva get an equal number of votes as PowerPoint!

Even more surprised to see Google Slides and Gamma with so few votes. Google Slides is my go to presentation tool, even though I have access to PowerPoint and Canva.

​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: Changing the way you do your next presentation

• Interesting: The second most popular presentation tool

• Roadblock: Why we’re focusing on PowerPoint desktop for our new app

This is how we think all PowerPoint presentations should be done.

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

🗓️18th November (Zoom) & 20th November (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

What’s the second most popular presentation tool today?

Every week we run two workshops.

One on Zoom.

One on Teams.

The first thing we do is show people something they’ve never seen before:

A PowerPoint slide that is written and updated in real-time by the audience.

We also ask people what presentation tools they use and there’s a definite pattern emerging here.

Despite all the jokes about PowerPoint, it’s always the number one tool that people tell us that they use.

Before running these weekly workshops we assumed that Google Slides would be the second most popular. But we’ve found it’s often not even the third most popular.

Rising up the rankings are two relative newcomers to the world of presentations:

• Canva

• Gamma

Once the StreamAlive app for PowerPoint is finished, we’ll definitely be looking at integrating with Canva or Gamma next.

Want to influence our roadmap? Vote for your preferred presentation tool below!

50 tips to being a better virtual presenter

At the end of this month (November), we’re publishing a book on 50 tips to being a better virtual presenter.

We’ve had the who’s who of presenters, facilitators, educators, and live streamers submit their tips to help you become a better virtual presenter.

We’ve still got a few spaces left, so if you’ve got a tip that you’ve learned from all your virtual presenting experience, we’d love to include it in the book!

Submit a virtual presenting tip!

All submissions come with your name and mention of your company and/or LinkedIn profile.

The deadline is November 14th.

Rebuilding our PowerPoint add-in

We’re hard at work getting the StreamAlive add-in for PowerPoint ready to be used by everyone. One of the roadblocks that we hit is that PowerPoint works very differently when it’s being used online vs offline (ie. desktop PowerPoint).

This has been causing more than a few headaches because things that work fine on the desktop are not working on the browser version. Our code became more and more messy as we had to build exceptions to the different ways PowerPoint online and offline handled things.

After speaking to some senior folks at Microsoft who work on the PowerPoint product we’ve decided to halt development on our add-in for the PowerPoint browser version for now.

The Microsoft folks indicated that support for add-ins is more robust and mature in the desktop version than in the browser version, which makes sense because the desktop version has been around for 38 years!

Hopefully this doesn’t disappoint anyone who presents solely from the browser version of 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:

• Learn: How to fix PowerPoint’s biggest problem

• Tips: 50 ways to become a better virtual presenter

• Easter Eggs: Magic Maps is hiding more than just a few surprises!

Fixing PowerPoint’s biggest problem

What’s the difference between most PowerPoint slides and the PowerPoint deck below?

The yellow slides are written by the audience.

The other slides are what the presenter has to say.

By inserting ‘listening’ slides into your presentation you can create more memorable events for your audience.

This is how we think all PowerPoint presentations should be created.

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 on Tuesday and Thursday

🗓️4th November (Zoom) & 6th November (Teams)
⌚11am EST | 4pm GMT | 9:30pm IST
🌍 On Zoom & Teams (Yes, presentations on Teams can be fun!)

Save your seat!

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

50 tips to being a better virtual presenter

At the end of this month (November), we’re publishing a book on 50 tips to being a better virtual presenter.

We’ve had the who’s who of presenters, facilitators, educators, and live streamers submit their tips to help you become a better virtual presenter.

We’ve still got a few spaces left, so if you’ve got a tip that you’ve learned from all your virtual presenting experience, we’d love to include it in the book!

Submit a virtual presenting tip!

All submissions come with your name and mention of your company and/or LinkedIn profile.

The deadline is November 14th.

What happens when people type Wakanda or Hogwarts into Magic Maps?

StreamAlive’s Magic Maps feature is our most popular interaction. We can’t imagine starting a webinar or live stream without it.

Very early on we noticed that some clever people were entering fictional locations when we asked “where are you joining from?”

Magic Maps uses an open source location library (which is why sometimes it doesn’t recognize the localized spelling or historical names of places) and fictional locations are definitely not encouraged!

So we built our own library of places that people might type in.

For example, any one typing in Atlantis, or Hogwarts, or Wakanda, are rewarded with little (software) easter eggs on the map.

We have over 50 fictional locations with these little easter eggs. How many have you spotted so far?

Suggest a new fictional location

If you’ve got an idea for a fictional location and Magic Maps didn’t locate it for you, please let us know and we’ll add it in (with credit, of course!).

(just hit reply on this email, or use the live chat on our website)

​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:

• TODAY: Make your PPT slides react to what the audience says

• Learn: How we left a room of PowerPoint MVPs shocked (in a good way)

• Spotlight: We just LOVE what Said can do with StreamAlive on OBS

Make your PowerPoint slides react to what the audience says

​​​In today’s 30-minute live session, 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.

• Present on Zoom? Register here

• Present on Teams? Register here

💡 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

🗓️28th October (Zoom) & 30th October (Teams)
⌚11am EST | 3pm GMT | 8:30pm IST
🌍 On Zoom & Teams (Yes, presentations on Teams can be fun!)

Save your seat!

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

How we generated 315 comments in under 10 minutes

Last week was the amazing Presentation Summit.

It brings together the biggest public speakers and a whole gaggle of PowerPoint MVPs to geek out over everything presentation-related.

So how did we get a virtual room of PowerPoint experts to set the chat stream on fire?

We had the opportunity to showcase StreamAlive in front of an audience that had seen and heard everything before when it comes to presentations.

Lux was only speaking for 10 minutes, but in that time he managed to show a room of PowerPoint MVPs something they didn’t even know was possible.

PowerPoint slides could listen and react to what the audience had to say.

Here are a few of our favorite comments from the session…

This is so on trend for the future of presentations
Yay - no more Menti mambo or Kahoot chaos
It makes sense that you’re a fan of Escher!
I love the “Unmute The Audience” T-shirt!
This is amazing! Love it like chocolate.
A.I. for listening. What a concept!
Wish I knew about this eons ago!
No QR codes /add-ins ftw
Fun demo — thanks Lux!
Lux this is amazing
This will kill SLIDO
“Listening Slides”
Love this!
So. Cool.

And a couple of comments from LinkedIn about the event…

If you use PowerPoint in your online or offline presentations, it’s time to make your audience go “Wow!”

Join us for our live workshops where we’ll show you how to turn your PowerPoint slides into listening slides with polls, word clouds, quizzes, and more.

Join the live workshop

Show us your slides!

There isn’t a week that goes by where Said Saddouk (aka The Facilitainer) makes our jaw drop to the floor with the incredible virtual events he produces for his clients.

Using a combination of tools, including OBS, StreamAlive, Miro, and StreamDeck, Said creates virtual experiences that, in his words, don’t feel like a Zoom meeting.

Using StreamAlive’s chroma key settings, Said is able to place interactions on his screen with extra overlays thanks to OBS and it’s layered scene function.

If you want to learn from Said on how to use tools to elevate the virtual experience for your attendees, get yourself on the waitlist for one of his virtual facilitation masterclasses.

Or, make sure you register for one of his free events, like this Halloween-themed event tomorrow!

​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:

• TODAY: The new way to present on Zoom and Teams (that actually excites people)

• Learn: What we’ve learned from running over 100 webinars

What we’ve learned from running over 100 webinars

I was looking at our Luma calendar the other day and realized that in the last three years we’ve run 115 webinars to over 3,500 people.

Here’s what we’ve learned from all those webinars.

1/ Technical problems happen, roll with them

The more often you do virtual presentations the more likely you are to encounter technical problems that you hadn’t even thought of.

If something goes wrong it’s better to acknowledge that something has gone wrong. If you can, move on to the next item on the agenda and let people know that you’ll come back to whatever it is that has gone wrong.

Yesterday there was a huge outage at an Amazon datacenter and various websites and apps were all down.

We were giving a demo to potential clients and StreamAlive wouldn’t work because, as we later found out, our app relied on the Amazon datacenter that had an outage.

Normally that would throw off the demo, but in this case we rolled with it, switched to a PPT presentation and promised to show the live demo at another time.

2/ Most problems are forgivable, but not this one

Everyone in your webinar is super-accommodating when it comes to technical problems. The clients we spoke to yesterday even joked that maybe the Amazon datacenter outage had affected StreamAlive - and they were right!

However, there is one technical problem which is unforgivable and will cause people to leave early.

Your microphone.

You can have the crispest HD camera, a beautiful setup, a flawless presentation, but if your microphone is picking up background noise, or is on the cusp of human hearing, or makes you sound like Darth Vader, you’ve lost your audience.

Invest in a good, external microphone with noise-cancelling abilities. Your audience will thank you. So will your marketing team!

3/ Stand up

This is the most common tip for virtual presenters but trust us, it makes all the difference. The energy and movement you can bring from standing up is the difference between people staying on in your webinars and dropping off early.

It’s second only to having a good microphone.

4/ Prep time can be reduced significantly

When we started our webinars three years ago our prep-time started 30 minutes before the call with multiple technical checks, can you see my screen checks, am I audible checks, and so on.

Now we fire up Zoom about two minutes before we’re due to start because all those technical checks are muscle memory and we present so often that we’ve built confidence and trust in our tools to deliver.

5/ Learn tools like Ecamm and OBS

When you (the presenter) turns up to a webinar looking like you’re joining the weekly marketing meeting, then the audience is going to treat it like another meeting.

Tools like Ecamm and OBS help turn your video feed into something much more visually engaging and signals to your audience that:

a) You have invested time and effort into making this webinar a better experience

b) You are a professional presenter who (potentially) knows what you are doing, and by extension, what you are talking about.

Want to see how we do our webinars now?

We have two upcoming sessions showing you how presenting on Zoom and Teams can be fun.

• Present on Zoom? Register here (happening today)

• Present on Teams? Register here (happening on Thursday)

The new way to present on Zoom and Teams

We’ve all sat through slide decks that feel more like sleep aids than live presentations. But what if your PowerPoint could do more than just present? What if it could listen, respond, and involve your audience, without breaking your flow?

• 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.

Save your seat

​​💡 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

🗓️21st October (Zoom) & 23rd October (Teams)
⌚11am EST | 3pm GMT | 8:30pm IST
🌍On Zoom! (Yes, presentations on Zoom can be fun!)

Save your seat!

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

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:

• Join: This little app makes PowerPoint presentations more engaging

• Learn: What if most of your PPT slides weren’t yours?

The biggest problem with PowerPoint?

PowerPoint hasn’t changed much since shoulder pads were in fashion (hello, 80s!).

It still puts audiences to sleep one slide at a time.

But something big is happening. You can unlock real-time audience interaction right inside your deck.

Polls, word clouds, spinner wheels, quizzes, and more, all inside your existing slides.

Join the webinar to see how.

(Spoiler: There are no QR codes, audience links, or second screens to share)

It’s been doing that for 38 years, so it’s quite good at it.

Past events have been super-interesting, with attendees bringing A LOT of questions on how to set up StreamAlive to work in PowerPoint while presenting.

🗓️14th October (Zoom) & 16th October (Teams)
⌚11am EST | 3pm GMT | 8:30pm IST
🌍On Zoom! (Yes, presentations on Zoom can be fun!)

Save your seat!

Can’t make it? Click for more timings

What if most slides in your PPT weren’t yours?

Last week, Lux (the co-founder of StreamAlive) mapped out a workshop deck of 39 slides in PowerPoint.

Nothing unusual in that.

Only, in this deck, just 11 slides were purely presenter-led.

The rest (28 of them) were going to be written in real time by the audience. That shift from “me talking” to “us building” matters more than you might think.

Why bother adding listening slides?

Decades of university-level research show that learners who actively engage via quizzes, discussion, polls, interaction retain more, pay more attention, and feel more invested.

In one study involving 703 students, embedding short quizzes inside online lectures (officially called “interpolated retrieval practice” in academia, but basically means asking people to recall what they learned before you move on) significantly improved learning outcomes, even under distracting conditions (they played tiktok videos 😂)

Another university experiment compared active-lecture formats against traditional lectures.

It might not surprise anyone that the students in the active version reported higher engagement, stronger attention, and in many cases scored better on post-tests.

But! It is worth repeating and reminding ourselves that one-way presentations don’t do any favors if you’re trying to hold an audience’s attention.

Participation also helps with knowledge retention as well. Trainers all know about the knowledge retention curve

Again, data backs up everyone’s suspicion: participation improves knowledge retention.

A long-standing study of “interactive lectures” (the mildest form of active learning) found that in most cases, interactive lecture groups outperformed traditional lecture groups on retention tests.

But there is some inertia and biases to overcome to create interactive presentations. In one study, most students self-reported that they learned best in smooth lectures with the professor teaching the whole time. But follow-up tests showed that they had learned more in interactive sessions, or interpolated retrieval practice, if you want to get scientific about it.

“Actual learning and feeling of learning were strongly anticorrelated,”
Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom

What this means for your PPTs

When your slides become co-created with your audience, you’re leaning into what the education world knows works. Your slides are no longer a monologue. They’re scaffolding to invite active learner participation.

If we design slides that listen as much as they speak, we reduce passive consumption and increase ownership. Your audience helps build the narrative. They care more. They remember more.

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:

• Join: How a simple app fixes PowerPoint’s biggest problem

• Learn: Fit for Facilitation is back and hundreds have already registered

• Re-Discover: 6 things you didn’t know StreamAlive could do

The biggest problem with PowerPoint?

It uses slides to talk at people.

It’s been doing that for 38 years, so it’s quite good at it.

So developers have created all kinds of apps and add-ons that put the audience through a QR code circus to try and fix PowerPoint’s biggest flaw:

The slides are not interactive.

But that’s all changing with the biggest update to PowerPoint in its 38-year history. Create slides that listen and get authored by the audience.

You’ll see how interactions like polls, word clouds, interactive maps, spinner wheels, quizzes, and more can appear DIRECTLY inside your existing PowerPoint slide.

Past events have been super-interesting, with attendees bringing A LOT of questions on how to set up StreamAlive to work in PowerPoint while presenting.

🗓️9th October (that’s tomorrow!)
⌚11am EST | 3pm GMT | 8:30pm IST
🌍On Teams! (Yes, presentations on Teams can be fun!)

Save your seat!

Can’t make it today? Catch it next week.

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“I didn’t know StreamAlive could do that!”

One of the less obvious challenges of building a software product is letting the existing users know about new features.

We try to cover all our bases…

✅Announcements in the newsletter you’re reading right now

✅Announcements on our social media channels

✅Announcements in our app

Educating your existing users about new features is perhaps harder than educating new users on what your product can do, so you end up hearing sentences like…

“Wait, I didn’t know StreamAlive could do that!”

A couple of weeks ago we were talking to a long-time user of StreamAlive who facilitates loads of virtual corporate meetings and training sessions.

He’s an expert at using StreamAlive and other tools to engage the audience and keep their attention throughout his virtual sessions.

Lux was giving him a demo of our soon-to-be-launched PowerPoint add-in and used the “summarize the chat” option that has been available since April.

“Why don’t you announce all these cool new features?” the facilitator asked. “You should tell me about these things.”

Lux told him that we announced it in our newsletter, on social media, and in the app.

“Oh, I don’t read your newsletter or follow you on social media, and I close any annoying pop-ups.”

Umm.

So in case you missed it, here’s a quick look at some of the upgrades we’ve given our audience interactions over the last few months:

1/ Time, weather and photos on Magic Maps

When you hover over the pins in each location it gives you more details about the city or country so you can continue the conversation.

2/ Turn interaction responses into a work of art

StreamAlive can turn the responses into never-seen-before images as a memento or shareable graphic that represents the discussion that took place in the chat.

3/ Switch your interactions to a square format instead of landscape

Presenters who use OBS and Ecamm love this because it allows them to move the StreamAlive interactions off to one side. People who stream also love it because so many viewers watch the stream on their mobile phones, and a square ratio makes the interaction bigger on the screen.

4/ Change the fonts and text sizes on your interactions

One of the most requested features to customize an interaction has been available for months, but very few users know it exists.

5/ Slide transition animations

While it’s not quite PowerPoint-level transitions, StreamAlive does have the option to do the most common (and professional) transitions from one interaction slide to the next.

6/ Interactions have sounds now

Our goal is to make StreamAlive as much an audio experience as it is a visual one. We’ve added sound effects to a bunch of interactions such as to the Winning Wheel to make them more fun. You’ll find the sound settings under the Design menu option.

We’ll try to be less rubbish about letting you know about product updates in the future, we promise!

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:

• Join: Make your PowerPoint slides listen with interactive slides

• Learn: We asked our AI to create an interactive training session for the Mafia

• Discover: Have you tried StreamAlive’s new quiz interaction yet?

Think PowerPoint on Teams is boring?

We want to change the way you think about delivering PowerPoint slides on Teams (or anywhere else you present your slides).

In today’s session you’ll see the biggest update to PowerPoint in its 38 year history. Create slides that listen and get authored by the audience.

You’ll see how interactions like polls, word clouds, interactive maps, spinner wheels, quizzes, and more can appear DIRECTLY inside your existing PowerPoint slide.

Past events have been super-interesting with attendees bring A LOT of questions on how to setup StreamAlive to work in PowerPoint while presenting.

🗓️2nd October (that’s today!)
⌚11am EST | 3pm GMT | 8:30pm IST

Save your seat

Can’t make it today? Catch it next week.

What would a mafia training session look like?

If you’re as old as I am then you’ll remember many years ago a popular channel on YouTube:

Will it blend.

(Hit by a wave of nostalgia?!)

The premise was simple: take an every day product, put it in the blender, and see if it would blend.

It’s a great way to get eyeballs on your product.

Which brings me to customer training for the mafia.

We asked StreamAlive’s AI…what would a mandatory training session on customer service look like for the mafia?

And the results?

We love the questions (and answer options!) our AI came up with. We’re going to turn this into a video series like this…

Take a completely unrelated persona and marry it to a typical corporate training program.

Think…

• Safety training for Star Wars rebels

• Anger management for Storm Troopers

• Risk management for super heroes

If you’ve got some funny ideas, we’d love to hear them and give you a shoutout.

Lux is inviting you to give your ideas here.

We can’t wait to show off what we come up with!

Have you tried the quiz interaction yet?

StreamAlive’s new quiz interaction brings out the competitive nature of your audience.

The fastest fingers win the most points.

Login to your account to try it out.

Here’s a link to the Geography quiz that I created in StreamAlive in case you want to see how it works.

Do you have any feature requests or things you’d like to see improved in StreamAlive?

Drop by our community and let us know!

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 ❤️