Ho Ho Ho! Holidays are upon us. We at SlideShare thought it would be sort of cool to let our hair down, and do something fun! So we conjured up – The Holiday Spirit Contest 2009!

Celebrate anything and everything that revolves around these festive times and capture them onto presentations. What constitutes the ‘Spirit’ is entirely up to you. You can begin presentation uploads starting November 27^th 2009, 00:01 AM PST. The last day for uploads is January 2^nd 2010, 11:59 PM PST.

Drifting away from tradition, there won’t be any judges this time around. You judge. Vote up. Or down. (Yep, we brought that one back! ). Voting ends on January 5^th 2010 11:59 PM PST.

There are no limits to the number of presentation uploads either. You can put up as many entries as you want.

And as contests and celebrations go, there are prizes! Amazon Gift certificates worth $500 to be won for the winning entries. The winners will be declared on January 6^th 2010.

Check out this slide deck for a quick walkthrough.

Get started and help us get the word out! Blog it, Tweet it & Facebook it – Over a month long holiday celebrations are happening, and it’s happening here on SlideShare!

Best of luck with your entries and may the most ‘spirited’ one win!

It’s likely you are aware of the Microsoft Parent ToolBox Channel currently running on SlideShare. What you might not be aware is the channel offering called ‘The Microsoft Office Real Life Tools Sweepstakes‘. For every comment on the blogposts, or any presentation or document added to the channel, you get one entry into the sweepstakes. The more you participate by commenting or uploading, the more chances you get to win a copy of Microsoft Office 2007!

Check out details about the sweeptakes here.

The Parent ToolBox Channel has been a new addition to the SlideShare community. It is quite useful since it bring you tons of practical tips and pragmatic advice from some of the world’s best parenting bloggers, who are sharing their insights through this channel. The channel is helping create an infinite pool of parenting wisdom.

If you haven’t participated as yet, make sure to do so now. This is a one of a kind effort and we would like all members of our community to benefit from this.

Check out this awesome video. This is SlideShare in 3D!

This comes from NUS (National University of Singapore) and they are an active user of slideshare.

Carmine Gallo had a quick interview with our World’s Best Presentation Contest winner Dan Roam. Dan is amazingly insightful in his answers so we wanted to publish it for the SlideShare community. Enjoy!

Q: What was the purpose of explaining health care with stick figures and napkins?

A: Like many people, I became concerned about the direction the health care debate had taken in this country. The anger, anxiety, and frustration we saw at the town halls told me that we lacked a common understanding of the issues actually on the table; nobody had drawn the health care “big picture” to explain what anyone was talking about. The result is chaos. I decided to draw that picture, and to draw it as simply as possible in order to establish a clear baseline for deeper discussions. I learned long ago that when helping executives clarify their ideas, nothing is more powerful than a simple hand-drawn sketch. The less polished, the better; the more “human”, the better. When introducing a new idea, people react much better to a work-in-progress than a polished presentation.

Q: This is hugely different than the vast majority of business presentations and I’m sure you don’t recommend that everyone copy this template. However, what is the common principle that applies to anyone’s presentation?

A: On the contrary, I DO recommend that everyone copy this approach. If we really want our audience to engage and understand, we must create presentations that invite our audiences in. Simple, hand-drawn pictures draw people in. Preaching to our audience through bullet points or overwhelming them with mounds of undifferentiated data does not. The standard PowerPoint approach actually closes down discussion. If we really want to make our message stand out, we have to make it look human.
What is the key takeaway/learning from Back of the Napkin?

Three quarters of the neurons in our brain that process incoming sensory information are focused on vision. While most people in business think they can’t draw (they can) or that they’re “not visual” (they are), we can all get infinitely better at discovering, developing, and sharing new ideas by taking advantage of our innate “visual thinking” system: our eyes, our minds-eye, and our ability to draw simple shapes.

Q: Dan, your presentation looks like it’s created in PowerPoint. So, PowerPoint is not evil? Your thoughts?

A: For good or for bad, PowerPoint has become the standard tool for communication. Because of its ubiquity and the ease with which PowerPoint makes lazy thinking look “professional”, it’s easy to malign PowerPoint as evil. But PowerPoint is just a tool. It’s a hammer. We don’t blame the hammer if the building falls down; we blame the builder. The same applies here. As a simple framework for telling a linear story, PowerPoint is fine. We get in trouble when we let all the unnecessary polishing tools in the menus do the our thinking for us.

Q: Finally, all the winners are highly visual. Does this represent the new trend in PowerPoint design?

A: Using visuals isn’t just a trend in PowerPoint design; using pictures to think, work, and share is the dominant business communication trend of our time, period. Which makes sense: in a globalized business world where we likely don’t speak the same first language as our colleagues and where we face problems of such complexity that they defy words, pictures are the answer.

The SlideShare Facebook app has lately been getting some love from business bloggers & commentators. Check these out :

BeAWealthyEntrepreneur.com in its write up How I Grew My Client Base with FaceBook says –
“…..slideshare is know as the largest community for sharing presentations. I upload my powerpoint, openoffice, Keynote or PDF files and view presentations shared by others. This is a great way to spread thought leadership and expertise through presentations you may have delivered locally.”

frenchcreekpress.com in its write up Five tips for a successful Facebook fan page says –
“Raid your archives: Content is king – so what to do if you don’t have any content to share? Don’t underestimate yourself. If you’ve got PowerPoint presentations, use slideshare.net and an RSS feed to leverage them on your FB page….” .

Then again, in a subsequent writeup, it says “….Well, this is a no brainer. Instead of using Involver’s Slides for Pages app, just use SlideShare’s own app to share your presentations on your page. Link your Facebook account with your SlideShare account and fans will see your latest presentations as well as those you’ve marked as a favorite. Don’t forget to add both a tab and a box to the page to make it easier for fans to find your presentations.”

Taragana.com in its blogpost Top 10 Facebook Apps for Business writes “…This is world’s largest community for sharing presentations where you can upload your PowerPoint, OpenOffice, PDF files or Keynote. Further you can view presentations by others. It’s provides a great way to share your presentations on your profile.”

Sitewire.net in Top 5 Apps For Your Facebook Profile has this to say “…The Slideshare app is the world’s largest community for sharing digital presentations. You can upload PowerPoint, OpenOffice or PDF files and view presentations shared by others. This is an awesome way to spread thought leadership and expertise through new or existing presentations.”

Big thanks to these folks. In case you haven’t added SlideShare to your Facebook profile, go here to do so.

This is a great visual presentation of the social media landscape. (please watch this is full screen mode) This comes from Banner, a London based agency.