Presentation platform Pitch adds asynchronous video

Presentation software maker Pitch has added a recordings feature so that users can now record and insert short videos directly into their presentations.

Users can record videos directly onto individual slides, with multiple collaborators all having the ability to add a recording into the same slide deck. The new feature has been built directly into the slide editing experience, with users simply needing to add a recording block, similar to the add text or image process, and then positioning it alongside the other content on the slide.

“We built recordings to transform presentations for the way work happens now,” Tomaž Štolfa, head of presentation experience at Pitch said. Štolfa believes that as collaboration is no longer confined to conference rooms or video calls, teams expect to be able to align asynchronously ahead of a big presentation, without being limited by schedules or physical locations.

Any member of a Pitch workspace can add recordings to slides, and anyone with access to a presentation can watch them. Users have the option to toggle recordings on and off and can also manage the playback speed of their videos. Comments and reactions allow teams to share updates and provide feedback inside the presentation environment.

Pitch has also integrated recordings into some of its most popular templates, and added two new templates, an async sales deck and async pitch deck.

Supporting asynchronous collaboration

As companies continue to embrace hybrid work models, asynchronous forms of communication have become increasingly popular, particularly among organizations that have teams working across multiple time zones.

Slack, Cisco, Dropbox, Asana and Trello all added video messaging features to their platforms in the latter half of 2021, while Loom, the which lets users create short videos that can be sent to colleagues and viewed whenever is convenient for them, has rapidly grown to a reported valuation above $1.5 billion.

Speaking to Computerworld in October 2021, Angela Ashenden, principal analyst at CCS Insight said that many organizations “massively over-pivoted” towards real-time collaboration with video meetings and videoconferencing, which had adverse effects on lots of workers. “The growth of asynchronous is a realization that we need to manage our workloads better,” she said.