Apparently, my body decided May was a great time to take a month off. Viral respiratory thing, zero energy, maximum irony because May was an insanely busy month. But June is here, the kids are home, old friends are back in the picture, and I've rejoined the land of the living. Good to be back. Hope your summer is off to a great start.

Thanks for reading!

Supported by iSpring

If your slides still look like your notes app threw up on a PowerPoint template, this one's for you. Luis Urrutia is a Microsoft MVP and senior presentation designer and he's running a free webinar on June 23rd at 4pm on exactly the kind of stuff nobody teaches you: structure, layout, contrast, hierarchy. How to take dense content and turn it into slides that actually communicate something.

Whether you're building decks for stakeholders or designing training materials, this is a practical hour with someone who clearly knows what he's doing.

​Save your spot →​

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Your Screenshots Can Do Way More Than You Think

Raise your hand if you feel like you can't keep up.

New AI tools every week. Every LinkedIn post is a workflow you haven't tried. Every conference session is a capability you didn't know existed. It's a lot, and if you're feeling behind, you're not alone.

But here's the thing. You don't need to chase every shiny object. You need one solid workflow that actually makes your job easier and this one qualifies.

I caught a recent demo from the Build Capable XCL team featuring Matt Pierce from TechSmith. What they walked through takes static screenshots — the kind you'd take anyway when documenting a process — and uses AI to turn them into a complete instructional video. Script, voiceover, cursor animation, callouts. From images. No recording session.

Wrap that video in an XCL link, and you'll know exactly what learners did with it: whether they watched, where they dropped off, whether they replayed a section, all without an LMS, without user accounts, without any of the infrastructure that usually makes tracking feel like a separate project.

One capture session. A job aid, a video, and real data.

Here's how it works.
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Also supported by Neovation

You can keep building better courses. Or you can borrow what marketers spent decades figuring out — how to get people to care in the first place. I'm doing a session on this with the team at Neovation on June 24 at 1 pm ET / 12 pm CT / 10 am PT.

​Come join me ​→​

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Worth your attention
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SnagIt Step Capture

Most people know Snagit as a screenshot tool. The feature that makes this workflow possible is Step Capture.

Walk through a system process. Snagit takes an annotated screenshot on every click and builds a numbered, editable document as you go. Adjust focus areas, blur sensitive fields, add callout text, and reorder steps. When you're done, export it as a PDF job aid, Word doc, or PowerPoint, whatever format you need.

That's already a usable asset. But you've also just done the capture work once, and that single session is about to become a lot more than a document.

(Snagit is currently sold separately, but TechSmith has announced it will bundle with Camtasia individual licenses soon.)

Try it: techsmith.com/snagit​

Camtasia.ai

Here's the part that really impressed me.

Drag your Snagit screenshots into this browser-based tool. It generates a complete instructional video: script, voiceover, animated cursor movement, callout text, and zoom effects from static images. No recording. No narrating. No timeline editing.

The AI makes a reasonable first pass. You can edit the script, adjust the focus area on each screenshot, and regenerate specific sections. Don't like something? Change it. You're not burning credits or starting over just fix the part that's off.

It's a TechSmith Labs project and still in beta, so expect the occasional rough edge. But the output is a genuine working draft, not a placeholder. When you're ready for more control, export the whole project directly into Camtasia.

Try it: camtasia.ai​

Camtasia

The Camtasia.ai export drops into Camtasia as a full project file: separate tracks for cursor movement, audio, callouts, and captions. Fix what the AI got wrong. Adjust timing. Swap in your own narration. The Audiate integration lets you edit audio by editing text: delete a word from the transcript, and the audio drops with it.

Export when you're done: an MP4 and a VTT caption file. That second one matters because it's what makes the video accessible and gives XCL the data layer it needs.

(AI voice, avatars, and script generation are tier-dependent. Check the pricing page before you commit.)

Try it: techsmith.com/camtasia​

Build Capable XCL

No LMS. No user accounts. No seats. Just a link.

XCL generates a trackable link to any content: video, PDF, SCORM, website, whatever. Share it however you want. When someone uses it, you see everything: did they watch? Did they pause, skip, or replay a section — which usually means something wasn't clear? Did they finish it at 2x speed? All of it lands in a dashboard or a CSV you can hand to an AI tool and ask: where did people struggle?

The Build plan is $49/month and supports unlimited learners. There's a 14-day free trial and a free sandbox at buildcapable.com/xcl if you want to explore before committing.

Try it: buildcapable.com/xcl​

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The Bottom Line

At some point, someone's going to ask you whether the training worked. Whether the video got watched. Whether it actually helped.

This workflow means you'll have an answer.

Capture once with Snagit. Generate a draft with Camtasia.ai. Refine it in Camtasia. Track everything in XCL. One session produces a job aid, a video, captions, and the data to prove or disprove that it landed.

What AI tools are you loving? Hit reply and let me know.

🎵 Today I'm listening to Depeche Mode​

📍Where I'll be next

• ​Why Great Training Gets Ignored & How to Fix It, June 24 (Online)
• ​ATD Core4, Sept 29-Oct 1(Indianapolis, IN)

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