SlideShare is building a directory of speakers for conferences to make it easier for conferences to find you and to let us watch out for your presentations to feature on the home page.

Register at our speaker directory today to be sure that you can be found on SlideShare once we launch the directory.

Conference organizers, if you would like to spread the word about your conference, fill out our form and we’ll be sure to include that information in our next newsletter that goes out to 800,000 people. There’s one catch though: you need to provide a registration discount (a coupon or promo code) for SlideShare users.

The wait is finally over for Mac users - we now support Keynote ‘09 files!

You can now directly upload Keynote ‘09 files to slideshare. Yes that’s right… no need to even zip them

Yet again, we think we might be the first ones to support conversion of Keynote’09 files.

In case you’ve missed the announcement at MacWorld, Apple released a new version of their productivity suite iWork ‘09.

This has resulted in a change in the way Keynote files are saved and our converter chokes on them when you upload one to SlideShare.

We’re working on the problem and should have a fix out soon, stay tuned!

Last week we asked you “where next?” And we got a range of answers (some more popular than others) but no one guessed what we really were up to!

Today we launch the SlideShare ribbon for Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, a way of bringing SlideShare right into your desktop, or as TechCrunch put it, “sending PowerPoint to the cloud.”. You can now manage all your SlideShare uploads from PowerPoint, search through presentations on SlideShare, browse your contacts and groups’ presentations and also download them into PowerPoint. Such an integration, as ReadWriteWeb points out, “casts all desktop software in a new light - no matter how ‘unsocial’ a particular app may seem.”

Take a look at this video for a quick overview of some of the features in the SlideShare ribbon:

You can download and install the SlideShare ribbon from this page: http://www.slideshare.net/developers/apps/pptribbon

Update: This news has quickly spread across the web… check out some commentary

TechCrunch : slideshare sends powerpoint to the cloud link

ReadWriteWeb : SlideShare presents your newest social app: powerpoint! link

Bert Decker’s Blog : I think this is the first time a Web 2.0 property has been embedded so deeply into desktop productivity software. link

Lifehacker : The plug-in, adds basic “Open/Publish/Manage” buttons to a new SlideShare tab, as well as buttons for finding related material on the sharing site (for design inspiration, perhaps?) and letting you see how many co-workers, or general surfers, have checked out your shared stuff. link

Nitin Badjatia : I think one of the primary reasons this happens is that most PowerPoint presentations are developed in a vacuum. The lone PowerPoint ‘artiste’ slaves away, late at night, slapping together random thoughts and cheesy graphics into a massive deck that often misses the point. SlideShare, the online slide deck sharing site (sort of a YouTube for slideware), has just released a PowerPoint plug-in, that may bring the lonely deck-developer into the social realm. With the add-on, deck-developers will be able to share their works of art directly from the very non-social PowerPoint, and more importantly, be able to search for inspiration directly from within PowerPoint link

Internet Evolution : I typically don’t have to fight mosquitoes carrying malaria and yellow fever, nor have to deal with excessive tropical heat or move millions of cubic feet of dirt and rock. What I do have to deal with is inordinate layers of “bluereaucracy” and posting presentations on the Interwebs. To make the latter easier, SlideShare has come up with a PowerPoint plugin that lets users edit and publish presentations directly to their SlideShare accounts, reports TechCrunch. The new feature also allows one to automagically notify others of the new presos via Twitter. Very cool. link

Web Worker Daily : I was able to not only review and edit the slide show within PowerPoint but also perform the upload, tagging and title/description write-up with no need to use a web browser. Basically, SlideShare is one of the first services to embed web hosting access so deeply within an Office application. link

You read that right! SlideShare now has over one million registered users as of the 24th of November.

A big shout out to the awesome community that has grown around SlideShare for making this possible. Honestly, this would not have been possible without the support and participation of all our users.

And of course, thanks and congratulations to ThinkPublic, our millionth registered user!

Here’s looking to 10 million!

Chris Hulls‘ entry, “The Financial Crisis: A Historical Perspective” won our recently concluded Credit Crisis Contest. Chris’ entry was also his first presentation on SlideShare, so I’m sure all of us are a little curious about him. This short interview should help put Chris Hulls in perspective for us!

Tell us a little about yourself. Your background, where are you based, what you do for a living? Are you involved in the finance sector?

I finished school at Berkeley a couple years ago and am currently on deferral from Harvard Business School while working on a tech startup, Life360. My last job was a bit more fitting for this contest; I was doing investment banking at Goldman Sachs and was there when Paulson left to the treasury. I also worked just down the hall from Neel Kashkari, who is now running the big $700 billion bailout fund. I didn’t know him too well, but it’s amusing to me when I hear about the big Goldman conspiracies - Neel had only been there a few years and had just been promoted to VP (which is basically a mid-level manager at an investment bank). He didn’t even have an office yet and sat in the same cubicles as the interns.

Do you design a lot of presentations? When and how did you create the presentation for the contest?

No, not too often. I did a lot during college for business classes, but I’m actually having to de-learn what they taught me; professors liked to see complex charts and spreadsheets which they used as a proxy for your level of effort. I fell flat on my face using that approach in the real world. I did my entry for the contest after one of your investors, Dave McClure, wrote about it on his blog. I’ve been in touch with him for a couple months but the last time we met I showed him a presentation that was still a bit rough. The contest was a good chance to do a presentation on something I’m passionate about while also putting a polished set of slides out there for him or anyone else to see.
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Mashable has this great post with a collection of 10 great Google slideshows

Need we mention where all those slideshows are hosted?

Konstantyn Spasokukotskiy creator of  “The Crisis 101” won the second prize in SlideShare’s Credit Crisis Contest. Here’s a little more about him in his own words…

Tell us a little about yourself? Your background, where are you based, what you do for a living? Are you involved in the finance sector?

I use presentations in my daily life. I have extensive technical and business background. And I’ve got an entrepreneurial bug too.

This award helped me to test my today’s ideas and approaches for the future. That is, the recognition added a sustainable value for me. It made me a guy you’ve heard about - the benchmark indicator criterion. Thus it was instrumental in my quest for higher personal productivity. The special beauty of this particular contest was that the public is on the winning side too. Supposedly you like the info you’ve seen in my presentation, where else can you find such an unabridged win-win?

I live in Peachtree City, Georgia, USA. I am an entrepreneur by design. My current venture is a company, which brings artificial intelligence to vehicle parking. We automate parking business processes making it less expensive, complex but more reliable. You can find more info on my web site (see my SlideShare profile.)
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