Happy Mother’s Day!

We had such a great response to our Mother’s Day contest—thank you so much to everyone who participated!

Our Grand Prize Winner!

There were so many fantastic decks it was difficult to choose, but this one by Josh Zagorski (and his two super cute little boys) really touched our hearts. We hope their #1 mom loves it, along with her new iPad Mini! Congratulations, Jenn!

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

Awesome in Two Languages

This one, by JR Garcia, was notable both for its beautiful message in both English and Spanish as well as the extraordinary number of views it has received—wow! We were so impressed we decided to surprise JR with a $50 iTunes gift card. Be proud!

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

All-Around Awesome

And this one, by Jeff Brown, was a late entry but we really loved the style, humor, and creativity. Jeff also scores a $50 iTunes gift card, for general awesomeness.

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

More Inspiration

There were really so many fantastic entries—be sure to check them out on our Pinterest board, and it’s not too late to create your own Mother’s Day Haiku Deck message! Making mom feel celebrated and loved is an outright winner, we think.

Thanks again to all who participated–and a special Hai-5 to our amazing moms.

It’s Teacher Appreciation Day and Week here in the U.S., and we want to give a special shout-out to all of the amazing, innovative, inspiring educators in our creative community, all around the world!

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

Teacher Appreciation Tips

Just for our teachers, we’ve collected a few power tips to make your lives easier, save you time, and keep you (and your students) inspired.

1. Managing Accounts

The easiest way to manage a classroom of iPads is to create a single email account for the entire class to use. You’ll need to sign in to the app on each individual iPad once–after that, the app will keep you signed in. Have students include their name(s) either in the deck title or on the first slide so you can easily keep track of their work. Once students have published their decks, you can sign in to the website using the class email account to view all of them in one place (click Gallery, then My Gallery). Read more about publishing and sharing here.

2. Turning Auto-Capitalization Off

If you’d like students to practice correct capitalization as they work, you might also want to adjust the auto-capitalization setting as you’re signing in to your classroom account on each iPad. From the Main Screen, tap the Settings wheel, then adjust the Use Auto-Capitalization? toggle to OFF. Read more about Main Screen settings here.

Toggling Auto-Capitalization On and Off

3. Teaching Digital Citizenship

Haiku Deck not only helps students focus their message and explore visual storytelling, it’s a great tool for teaching digital citizenship as well. The app’s unique  image search taps into more than 35 million beautiful, high-quality images that have been made available for (free) use under Creative Commons license, and proper attribution is pulled in automatically. From Play mode on the iPad, tap the CC logo in the bottom right corner to view the photographer as well as the type of Creative Commons license. (In Web view, look for the CC logo in the bottom black bar.) Read more about our Creative Commons image search here.

4. Image Searching

Haiku Deck does include an explicit terms filter, which prevents searches on naughty terms. Unfortunately, we can’t control how photographers tag their photos, and it is possible for some “inappropriate” images to appear in the search results. (This is why Haiku Deck has a 12+ rating in the app store; you can read more about that here.)

We’re working on ways to improve this, but in the meantime, we’ve been thrilled to see many forward-looking teachers using this as an opportunity to work with their students on digital responsibility as well as digital citizenship. There are also some creative workarounds if you’d like to use Haiku Deck with your students and are concerned about image results:

• Do some searching on your topic ahead of time to look for (and possibly discuss) trouble spots.
• Create a folder or set of pre-screened images in Google Drive, Flickr, or Dropbox for your students to access.
• Have students generate their own images by using the iPad camera (here’s an example), or by creating illustrations and pulling them in off the camera roll, like this one:

Sample Haiku Deck Using Student Artwork

5. Publishing Without Email

We heard from teachers that many classrooms don’t have access to email, so you can now publish straight to the website. Tap SHARE, then select one or more categories and tap PUBLISH, and your deck will be published to your Gallery on the Haiku Deck website. If you like, you can tap COPY URL to grab the link right from the app. You can read more about publishing and sharing here.

6. Adding Notes and Printing

By limiting the amount of text on each slide, Haiku Deck encourages students to keep their message focused and to discuss their topic (instead of reading slides word for word). They can take their decks to the next level by signing in to the website (using the class email account as described above), opening their deck in Web Edit View, and adding supporting details and even links to more resources. You can then click DOWNLOAD (look for the text buttons immediately below the deck) to create a great-looking PDF that you can save, email, or even print. Read more about adding Notes here.

Sample Haiku Deck with Notes

7. Embedding in a Classroom Blog or Site

If you have a class blog or website, you can easily embed your Haiku Decks right from the app or from the website. From the app, tap SHARE, then PUBLISH, then POST TO BLOG. From the website, look for the EMBED button right under the deck. In either case, simply copy the code string and paste to your blog. Read more about embedding Haiku Decks here, and see a couple of Haiku Decks embedded in this great post on Free Technology for Teachers.

8. Ideas

If you’d like to see how educators are using Haiku Deck for a wide range of teaching purposes, from fact gathering to creative expression, be sure to visit our Education Case Studies Pinterest board frequently–we add new examples every week.

Haiku Deck Education Case Studies Pinterest Board

More Inspiration

You also might enjoy reading about 4th graders creating sensory poems and character studies, Haiku Deck for vocabulary development, and Haiku Deck Goes New School. We also invite you to participate in our brand-new Haiku EDU community on Google+.

And if you’d like us to feature your work, please email link(s) to gallery@haikudeck.com, or tweet us using the hashtag #hdgallery.

Teacher, thank you so much for everything you do! And if you have a question we didn’t answer or a tip you’d like to share, let us know! Drop us a line any time at team@haikudeck.com.

This awesome tweet got our Friday off to a perfect start:

@clevenole @dwhalen5 I use @haikudeck and think its the best thing since pizza delivery.

— Heather (@LaVieBoheme73) May 3, 2013

Maybe the sunshine was making us feel a little giddy, but we thought, wow, wouldn’t it be AMAZING if we tracked Heather down and DELIVERED A PIZZA to her?

This brainstorm quickly gathered momentum around the office, so we did a little Twitter recon to discover that Heather was attending a conference in Boston and that she was planning a happy hour meetup at a downtown brewery. Perfect!

Lisa, our awesome customer evangelist, made all the arrangements. She called the brewery, then she researched a nearby pizza place that had gotten great reviews on Yelp. She placed the order. Everything appeared to be falling into place. At the appointed time, we watched our Twitter feed with anticipation.

Unfortunately, our surprise didn’t quite work out as planned. The pizza guy showed up to a packed bar, and the person Lisa had made the arrangements with was nowhere to be found. Heather was on a tour of the brewery. We called the brewery, but were told no outside food was allowed. By the time we got a manager to agree to hold Heather’s pizzas for her in the kitchen, the delivery guy had left–with the pizzas {cue sad trombone}.

The moral of this story? Surprises are tricky to pull off, especially when you’re working across time zones with people you’ve never met before. Our little pizza stunt was THISCLOSE to being off-the-hook amazing, to totally wowing one of our fans with something unexpected and memorable. But even though it fell flat, our heart was (and is) in the right place.

So maybe cross-country pizza was pushing it, but we do promise to wow you with the things we can control–we are here to answer your questions, help you troubleshoot, and fix things that aren’t working for you.

New Haiku Deck Customer Support Page

We invite you to take a look at our newly revamped Support page, where you can submit a help request in a flash, post a feature request, or share your favorite tips and tricks. We know customer support can be incredibly frustrating–when the person you explained everything to disappears and you have to start over, when you’re told conflicting information, when nobody answers the phone (or the tweet, or the email). Although we’re not perfect, we really do make support a priority–so if you need help, we’re here for you!

P.S. Heather, thanks again for being a good sport about the mix-up—we owe you a pizza!

Happy Mother’s Day!

I’ve given my mom plenty of books and flowers over the years for Mother’s Day, and this time I took a different tack. I created a special Haiku Deck to tell her all the important things she’s taught me over the years (click to view):

Yes, that’s me on the right.

One of the best things I’ve learned from mom is that anything is possible (yes, we really did find that hearing aid on the beach the next day), so here’s what I propose: How about a Haiku Deck Mother’s Day tradition? It would be so amazing to see an outpouring of Haiku Decks capturing the most memorable lessons our moms have passed down. Let’s fill the world with beautiful Mother’s Day Haiku Decks that are as unique and inspiring as our moms.

As an added bonus, I’ll personally pick the most creative, inspiring deck and send an iPad mini to the winner’s mom. I’ll even spend 30 minutes on the phone to personally teach her how to use Haiku Deck. (On that note, you can read how my own mom Ellen inspires us to keep things simple, and get her famous brisket recipe in Haiku Deck form, on our blog.)

How to take part in Mother’s Day, Haiku Deck style:

1. Create a Haiku Deck of “Things I Learned from Mom.” It doesn’t have to be long; just heartfelt. You can use your own photos, photos from our Creative Commons image search, or a mix. (If you live in a place that isn’t celebrating Mother’s Day this month, no problem–you can still participate!)

2. Send a link to your deck to gallery@haikudeck.com, or tweet it using the hashtag #hdgallery, by Thursday, May 9th at midnight PDT.

3. Be sure to share your deck with your mom as well as with your friends, families, and social networks–we’ll be judging decks based on their content and creativity as well as how many views they’ve received.

4. We’ll showcase all entries we receive on our special Things I Learned from Mom Pinterest board and the best ones in our Gallery.

5. We’ll announce the winner on Friday, May 10th and ship an iPad mini (16GB wi-fi with an engraved personal message) to the winner’s mom. (Of course, making your mom feel special is pretty much a win-win.)

Oh, and on the anything’s possible note? Our team is *incredibly* honored to be nominated for two different Geekwire Awards. If you could take 5 seconds to click through and vote for us for App of the Year and Startup of the Year before voting closes TODAY (April 30), it would definitely make us smile big–and make my mom incredibly proud. As always, thank you for your support and for being part of our amazing creative community.

Sincerely,

Adam

Co-founder and CEO, Haiku Deck

We love seeing how innovative educators are using Haiku Deck to bring creativity to iPads in the classroom. When we saw tweets from Annie Lafont (of Acacia Elementary in Fullerton, CA) about her students’ storytelling projects, we got in touch to hear more.

4th graders using Haiku Deck at Acacia Elementary

Q&A with Fourth Grade Teacher Annie Lafont

Haiku Deck: What inspired you to try Haiku Deck?

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Trilogy, Madrona Venture Group, Founders Co-op, and Angels Back Early Leader in Mobile Productivity

Series A Funding Announced

SEATTLE, WA–(April 3, 2013) – Haiku Deck, a Seattle-based company that aims to transform presentation creation and sharing, announced today that it has secured $3 million in Series A funding. The investment was led by Trilogy Partnership with participation from Madrona Venture Group, Founders Co-op, tech entrepreneur Sarah Leary, and other angel investors.

Haiku Deck launched its iPad app to broad acclaim in August 2012 and has ranked #1 in productivity in 36 markets around the world. Last month Haiku Deck released version 2.0, with a powerful new set of business-focused features and functionality.

“We’ve gone from zero to half a million customers in just a few months, so it’s clear that Haiku Deck’s simple, fun approach to creating beautiful presentations is resonating,” said co-founder and CEO, Adam Tratt. “As mobile devices continue to change the way people work, we see a huge opportunity in helping everyone create the kind of presentation that used to require a design professional.”

Sample Haiku Deck chart illustrating iPad penetration by industry (source: Citrix)

Haiku Deck, hailed as the Instagram for Pitch Decks by Mashable, is gaining traction as a powerful, time-saving tool for traditional presentations and new formats including tablet-centric pitch decks, creative communication pieces, and rich content for blogs. Its innovative Creative Commons image search addresses a common pain point of finding and properly attributing free, high-quality images.

The funding will allow Haiku Deck to expand its lead in mobile-first presentation tools by growing the team, expanding to other platforms, and developing a premium offering.

“We believe Haiku Deck is well positioned to disrupt an industry that’s seen surprisingly little innovation in the past two decades,” said Yuval Neeman, Partner at Trilogy. “The consumer response and product reviews have been extraordinary, and we’re excited about the potential for this next phase of growth.” Haiku Deck received seed funding from Madrona Venture Group and angels after completing the TechStars program in Seattle.

Haiku Deck has been embraced by business leaders, entrepreneurs, educators, realtors, salespeople, marketers, and creative thinkers worldwide. Recent examples from the Haiku Deck Gallery include:

Tomorrow Ready CIO, by John Sheridan, Chief Technology Officer of Australia

Elon Musk Quotes from #SXSWI, by Karen Budell, Chief Content Officer, Imagine

Not Your Typical Graduate Job, by Andy Parker, founder of Incredibli

5 Sales Prospecting Techniques You Probably Never Tried, but Should, by Ago Cluytens

Teaching Frameworks for Creative Collaboration, presented at Educon 2.5

Visual Storytelling, by Ken Shelton

About Haiku Deck

Haiku Deck makes it simple and fun to create and share flawlessly beautiful presentations. Headquartered in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, Haiku Deck is a privately held company with the backing of prominent investors including Trilogy Partnership, Madrona Venture Group, Founder’s Co-op, and Techstars. The Seattle-based startup was founded by Adam Tratt and Kevin Leneway. For additional information and company images, visit www.haikudeck.com/newsroom.

Media Contact

Nicole Brunet

408-761-1803

media@haikudeck.com

We hope you’ve had a chance to download the latest version of Haiku Deck, try out all the cool new features, and set some new kinds of stories free! Our Gallery is bursting with beautiful decks, and for your own presentation inspiration, here are a few of our favorites. (Hot tip: you can now browse the Gallery right from the app! Learn more here.)

Lists

In “Through the Noise,” Fenella Olynick uses short lists (and the striking Picaresque theme) effectively to deliver her “students matter, teachers care” message. (Learn more about creating lists here.)

Click to view the full Haiku Deck

Colorful Backgrounds

If you’ve experimented with solid-color slide backgrounds, you might have noticed that the palette of color choices has been expanded. We love mixing in solid-color slides to punctuate the flow of a presentation. Check out how Therese Beale uses them to make her message pop in “Message Gap: Three Clues You Have One.” (Learn how to select a solid-color background here.)

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I just wrapped up a series of three webinars, Presentation Boot Camp for Power Agents, with our friends at TruliaPro. I have attended plenty of webinars and given many talks to audiences of all sizes, but presenting a webinar was an entirely new experience.

What was hardest to get used to was…the silence! I wasn’t nervous about talking to 1,000+ people, but I realized how much I depend on visual and audio cues to develop a connection with my audience, to read how things are going, and adjust. It was as disconcerting as the first time I rehearsed my Ignite talk with the slides timed to auto-advance every 15 seconds. But, just like the Ignite talk or any new presentation experience, practicing was the key. By the third session, the host and I had developed a comfortable back-and-forth dialogue to keep things moving, even though we’ve never actually met in person! (Hai-5, Jovan!)

Session 1: Three Keys to Presentations that Wow

Click to view the full Haiku Deck with Notes

In the first session, Three Keys to Presentations that Wow, we covered some presentation best practices that are central to Haiku Deck, but that can be applied no matter what presentation tool you’re using: in a nutshell, keep things simple, beautiful, and fun. We also touched on the #1 mistake that most presenters make (and which I’ve certainly made myself in the past), which is treating your slides like content-rich documents instead of visual aids to illustrate and enrich your message. Using the Haiku Deck Notes feature is a great way to avoid this pitfall.

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After many weeks of hard work and at least 8 times that many afternoon trips to the neighborhood coffee shop, Haiku Deck 2.0 is now available in iTunes!

Yes, we’ve released updates in the past, but this is a big one, and it’s packed with all kinds of awesome new stuff! It’s like Christmas, New Year’s, and a disco-ball dance party all in one.

What’s New In Haiku Deck 2.0

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

For all the details, read more about:

• Making the best-looking charts and graphs you’ve ever seen, using only your fingertips
• Creating numbered and bulleted lists
• Cropping and repositioning images, right from the app
• The new streamlined publishing and sharing flow
• Cool new features you can access from the Main screen

But really, what we MOST want you to do is download or update Haiku Deck 2.0 TODAY, try it out, send us your feedback, rate and review it, tell your friends about it, and set your story free!

Love,

Team Haiku Deck

One of the most magical features of Haiku Deck is the built-in image search, which puts millions of beautiful, free (yes, free!), high-quality presentation images at your fingertips. And of course, you can also snap or import your own photos for a personal touch. Our palette of 14 professionally designed text layouts make it easy to position your header and subheader lines so that your text doesn’t cover up the graffiti tag or vintage Phillies ball cap that perfectly illustrates your point, but sometimes you just need more…control. We hear you loud and clear.

Haiku Deck 2.0 is packed with fantastic new features, but one of the most useful ones is the ability to crop and reposition your images, right from the app.

Resizing Presentation Images

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