The Visual Lounge lets you find out about TechSmith behind-the-scenes. Watch screencasts and videos from other customers, meet up with your fellow TechSmith users and staff, and get more tips and tricks!

I was thinking about the last time I visited London. I was a senior at Michigan State University on spring break. I had a great time seeing the city, trying a full English breakfast (complete with baked beans!), riding the tube, visiting Piccadilly Circus and other landmarks. I even had a brush with royalty! I saw Prince Charles at a movie premier (OK, so I was in a crowd of people with a gate between him and the fans, but I did see him!).

On that note, I'm very excited to head across the pond for several fantastic events in September. And, I have no doubt this trip will be just as exciting if not more so! And, I'd love to meet-up with you along the way!

My first stop is on September 3rd at the London Geek Dinner (big thanks to Ian Smith and Cristiano Betta for organizing) - The London Geek dinner is a social evening for geeks and geek-friends. Come on out. I'll buy you a beverage of your choice!

After that, I'm headed down to Brighton, UK for dConstruct. dConstruct is a conference for "people designing and building the latest generation of social web applications".

I'm also visiting with Stewart Milton of BlueOrange (Remember he does the Morae Boot Camps?) I'll be doing some videos with him. Do you have any questions I should ask him?

I am attending the VizThink London event, "Why the Vision thing is a Visual thing". I'm a big believer in Visual Thinking so I'm excited to attend this event.

I'd love to meet-up! If you're in England or Scotland and would like to talk shop, drop me an e-mail, call or text me (+1.517.410.0030), or contact me via Twitter! I'll be roaming around September 3 - 12.

Or, if you can't meet-up, do you have any travel advice for me? Where should I go, what should I see, where should I eat in Brighton, London, Glasgow and Edinburgh? I'll be posting pictures along the way here and hope to get some great video as well.

Students have flooded the campus of Michigan State University which is right next door to TechSmith. That means longer lines at the grocery store, freshman driving the wrong way down one way streets and general chaos. On the plus side, that also means football, basketball and hockey season are on their way! With schools getting back in session, I thought I'd introduce you to a great resource at TechSmith dedicated to Education. Meet, Dave McCollom! He's our Education Evangelist. He's focused on K-12 and Higher Education full time. So, if there's anything you need, feel free to put him to work. His contact info is below.

We shot a quick video in our office so you could 'meet' Dave. And, he is also our guest blogger today. And, with that, I'll let Dave take it away... enjoy!

Thanks for the intro Betsy. I think what you were really trying to say is that I am the Oates to your Hall, right? Or maybe vice-versa? Maybe that's a poor analogy anyway, because in a way this post is about launching a solo project of mine. In the not so distant future, TechSmith will be launching a new site for educators. The initial thought was for me to have a blog like Betsy's, but to have it be focused on educational users/content. That still may be the route we go, but before we get too far ahead of ourselves, we'd like to ask you (Educators) what you would like from us. You can help us by filling out this quick 10 question survey located here. If you have any thoughts/ideas/suggestions that don't relate to any of the survey questions please feel free to send me an e-mail (d.mccollom(at)techsmith.com). This is the same survey that was sent out in our recent Education Newsletter.

So without further ado, here is our intro video. It's a short one running 3:28 minutes (let the entire video load for best results). Don't forget to fill out the survey when you're done!

Materials used to make the video:
* Sanyo Xacti HD1000 Camcorder
* HP Compaq 8510p
* QuickTime Pro
* Camtasia Studio
* Hosting by Screencast.com

I had a wonderful time at Gnomedex this week. I'm sitting in the airport waiting for my flight back home to Michigan as we 'speak'!

I was continually amazed at the people I just happened to run into. For instance, Friday night I was looking for a Jing or Camtasia Studio screencast to show off on the blog for the 'Screencast of the Week'. I stumbled on to a great one and made a note to email the creator of the video. Less than 12 hours later, I actually ended up meeting the video creator, Troy Malone from Pelotonics in the hallway at Gnomedex. Just by chance! I love that!

Troy is using the Jingcasts to help with customer service and internal communication with his teams. He likes Jing because he can take a very personalized approach to answer someone's question or give feedback. And, guess what? His users love getting a screencast answer. Here's an example of a recent Jing that Troy did for a customer inquiry. Click on the screenshot below.

Enough of me talking about how Troy how uses Jing. Its better if Troy tells you himself. We shot a quick video in the hallway at Gnomedex. So, check out the video below. It's a quick one - it runs 3:34 minutes.

Materials used to make the video:

* Sanyo Xacti HD1000 Camcorder
* HP Compaq 8510p (yes, I got a new computer)
*QuickTime Pro
* Camtasia Studio

I also got to see non-profit screencaster extraordinaire, Beth Kanter at Gnomedex. I have to share with you Beth's fantastic screencasting primer wiki which you can see here!

Congrats Pelotonics on being our 'Screencast of the Week'! Any nominations for next week?

As you know, at TechSmith, we are passionate about visual communication. Earlier this year, Tony Dunckel, the SnagIt Product Manager, and I attended a community event called VizThink. The VizThink community is "devoted to the use of visualization in all forms of learning and communication". It's perfect for visual thinkers like you and me. Recently the folks at VizThink did a video with Tony showing off SnagIt and Jing and how you can use them in your visual communication. You can watch the video here.

And, in interest of transparency, we are sponsors of VizThink. I will be attending their upcoming European event in Berlin, Germany in October. You can find details about VizThink Europe here. If you'd like to meet up, drop me an e-mail.

Also, VizThink gave me a special discount code, SCT01 (that's S-C-T-Zero-One), which you can use to receive €50 off the registration fee at checkout.

Hope to see you there!

Have you ever thought about using SnagIt for more than just screencapture? I wanted to share with you a new resource that's been added to our Learning Center. There's a great new creative tutorial series which you can find here. There are 12 tutorials that will walk you through projects ranging from creating a water color painting to making Comic Book Graphics. Take your SnagIt skills beyond screencapture!

What other types of projects would you like to see added to the tutorials?

It's been awhile since we've had an update about Camtasia Studio on the Mac. The planets aligned last week and Troy Stein, the Camtasia Studio Product Manager, and I were actually both in the office on the same day. I was able to get a quick video with him about the project!

It's a quick video and runs just over 5 minutes long. I hope it answers some of your questions and offers you some insight into what we're working on.

I will be giving you regular updates here on the blog and via Twitter. And, we have a Mac newsletter - sign up for a subscription or get the RSS feed here.

What questions do you have about Camtasia Studio for the Mac? Troy and I will be making another video soon.

"Just can't wait to get on the road again..." I'm sitting in a hotel room in Las Vegas, humming that old Willy Nelson tune... And, that can only mean one thing. Tradeshow season is heating up again! And, I do mean 'heating' up!

This week, I'm in hot and sunny Las Vegas for the New Media Expo. TechSmith will have a booth there. If you're attending the show or in the area, stop by! We'd love to chat with you.

Next week I'm off to Gnomedex in Seattle. I'm excited to see many of the speakers including screencaster extraordinaire Beth Kanter (I hope to get a quick video interview with Beth - any questions?) and community expert Tara Hunt. Chris Pirillo puts on a great event! If you're in the Seattle area, I'd love to meet up for coffee, beer or whatever your beverage of choice is.

TechSmith participates in several Tradeshows and Conferences every month. You can check out our Event Calendar here. Drop me an e-mail if you'd like to meet-up. We usually have several people ranging from Product Managers to Developers to Marketing and Sales attend each show. And, we'd love to meet-up to get your feedback. Maybe we can even meet to sing a round of Willie Nelson songs on Karaoke!?!

I got a new laptop last week and yes, it has Vista on it. And, there's a feature on Vista that's is great for screencasting! Tony Dunckel, the SnagIt Product Manager, tipped me off to it last week when he was prepping for a webinar and it occurred to me that it would work well for screencasting too!

When screencasting, it is good to have as little distraction in your video as possible. You want your viewers to focus on the topic at hand. One way to do this is to clean up your desktop or other areas you will be showing off. A little 'house-keeping' is good! I made a quick jingcast to show you how to clean up your desktop quickly in Vista (Note: I learned this option is available on XP too from Pierre and Owen. See comments below!). The video runs less than a minute.

Got a screencast tip to share? If so, I want to hear it! Or better yet, Jing it to me!

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Paul Nielsen - he is a SQL Server rockstar!

I like Paul's screencasts for several reasons. First of all, he includes his all of his tutorials in one handy place - in a MediaRoll. You can see his MediaRoll to the left or on his homepage here. It's nice to have all of his screencasts in one place and I can subscribe to an RSS feed so I am alerted whenever Paul adds a new one. I also like that one of Paul's screencasts is a recorded presentation. Even though I was unable to attend his presentation live, I can still watch it because he recorded it with Camtasia Studio.

Want to learn more about the MediaRoll? You can find a nice write-up about it complete with a tutorial video here on the Screencast.com blog.

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week?

Everyone wants a job that they love. Do you have one? If not, I may have found some options you might be interested in.

I was poking around online looking for information about Camtasia Studio and in my search came across several job openings for Camtasia Studio experts. You can find the jobs listed here. Thought I'd share this with everyone since I'm sure there are a few people who'd like to get paid to screencast full time! And, no, I'm not looking for a new job. I feel very fortunate to have a job that I love with great co-workers at a fantastic company that makes cool products! :-) Which brings up another point - TechSmith is hiring too! You can check out a list of job openings here.