Sara credits Keynote, Apple’s cinema-quality presentation software, for allowing her to connect — both visually and viscerally — with a discerning audience of her peers. “I helped launch 33 Pictage user groups across the country — and I couldn’t have done it without Keynote. The difference between Keynote and other presentation tools is just night and day. The professionally designed themes are powerful jumping-off points for creating something very visually appealing. And the effects — things like the compelling slide transition and all the elegant animation features — really brought the training to life.
Expressing the Vision
“Presenting to peers, is intimidating enough,” she admits. “You need a tool like Keynote to make the presentation just phenomenal.” When she can’t present in person, Sara often exports her presentations as QuickTime movies, complete with audio, for podcasting or posting to the web. “For me, Keynote actually verges on being a movie-making tool. Which gives me yet another powerful way to express my vision for the business.
“I’ve always wanted to build my own business. I just never thought I’d have tools like Pages and Keynote to help make it so easy. Every day I appreciate the fact that I now have this amazing opportunity — a business of my very own to nurture and develop and evolve, and to make of it exactly what I want.”
iWork, Meet iLife
When Sara France isn’t building her business using Pages or Keynote, it’s likely that she’s using more Apple software — especially iLife — to pursue her other interests. She regularly muses on the intersection of life, business, travel, and photography in her blogs, created and maintained with iWeb. She also manages vast volumes of images and crafts custom slideshows, accompanied by music.
Sara points to the common media browser that’s integrated into all the iWork and iLife tools. ”It gives me easy access to all my photos, video, and music — from any application.” she says. Her communications remain consistent, because she’s always tapping into the same assets.
“All of the Apple products work so well together — they talk to each other in very elegant, common-sense ways,” she says. “If you simply pay attention, that old saying really comes true — learn one, and you’ve learned them all.”
“That’s utterly contrary to my experience with PCs in the past. Which is why I’veintegrated Apple products into both the leisure and business aspects of my life. Because, for me, there is no dividing line between the two.”
