I tried something new with a short “blog recap” video on the BlueGranite YouTube channel this morning. Instead of a technical video or presentation, I created a roundup video that focuses on the posts that my coworkers published this past month.
I’m a bit out of my element on this, so I would love to have feedback in the video comments on what works, what doesn’t work, what might capture or kill attention, etc.
The first feedback that I received was that my narration was too polite! Keep it coming. As I mentioned, this is something new. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, I want to continually improve and figure out how to make the content better.
Please take a look at the video and offer suggestions and comments on YouTube, and don’t forget to hit SUBSCRIBE on our BlueGranite channel!
https://www.youtube.com/c/BlueGraniteInc
Okay, you asked!
1) Voiceover is muddled, too much bass, too light on the top frequencies.
2) the animations are too busy, moving too fast to focus on content. That could be intentional, in which case maybe a simple set of bullet points would be sufficient.
3) it would be helpful to have a brief intro outlining the blog posts covered. Classic presentation advice is to first tell the audience what you will be presenting, then present, then tell them again what they just heard. Overkill for a brief video. However, I am inundated with video recommendations and want to know within a very short period of time whether I should continue. This is not an editorial comment on your work, more like a “triage”. If there was a topic at minute 4 of particular interest, the opening summary would let me know how to “graze” if my attention span was limited.
Again, I would never volunteer unsolicited advice, but you did ask
Awesome. Love and appreciate the feedback. If we end up doing another one next month, I’ll definitely take all this into consideration.
BTW, I viewed the video via a direct link. I now see that you have listed the topics on YouTube. Context matters, I’ll look deeper next time.
What I do like is the absence of lots of Rah! Rah! stuff, common with Adam and Patrick, and that’s intentional for their audience. I’m approaching 70, after four decades in the biz I don’t need motivation or entertainment. Not a criticism, their content is great, I just need to skip ahead, and after the first 100, I know their rhythm
BTW, I found your posts on PBI colors and themes very useful over the weekend. It’s odd the color selector is so primitive, compare with Visual Studio, Visio and others. No preview, no eyedropper.
Thanks Tom. It’s a somewhat different audience than Guy in a Cube, which I view as more exclusively technical. We try to bridge business and technical with content for both. Usually that works when looking at individual posts.
Thanks for the comment on the colors and themes. There’s a new color picker in the Themes area, but I’d agree with you overall. There are some areas where Power BI clearly plotted its own course for whatever reason. Themes, colors, fonts, and formatting leave me wondering why the design of Office products wasn’t considered from the start.