Cisco talent manager helps build AI Presentation Coach inside Vidcast
Cisco has launched an AI Presentation Coach inside Vidcast, and the project was driven in part by a talent management consultant, not a product team member. Laura Tinnelly says the tool grew from the high cost and limited availability of one-on-one communications coaching for directors.
- Cisco's AI Presentation Coach is now live inside Vidcast.
- It gives instant feedback on pacing, filler words, eye contact and framing, and predicts likely audience questions.
- The project began because one-on-one coaching cost $250-$800 per session and was not always available.
- Talent management consultant Laura Tinnelly helped build and launch it despite working outside product.
- Vidcast Director and GM Rami Salman backed the idea within minutes of the pitch.
Why Cisco built its own coaching tool
According to Tinnelly, a Talent Management Consultant based in New Zealand, the idea began about a year ago. She and her colleague Eva Hamburger were working on fiscal planning for director development and kept running into the same two barriers.
The first was price: one-on-one communications coaching cost $250-$800 per session, in her words. The second was availability. Coaching was not always on hand when it was needed, for example at 9 p.m. the night before a last-minute Executive Update.
The pair looked at existing tools, but Tinnelly writes that none quite hit the mark. They then asked whether they should build one themselves.
What the AI Presentation Coach does
The AI Presentation Coach now lives inside Vidcast. Users select or record a video and receive instant, personalized feedback on a range of delivery factors, from pacing and filler words to eye contact and framing.
The tool also goes beyond delivery. According to the article, it predicts the questions an audience is likely to ask, suggests how to answer them, and helps users tailor their message to whoever is in the room.
Tinnelly describes a pitch to the Vidcast team that barely got started. Three minutes into the meeting, Rami Salman, the Vidcast Director and GM, stopped them. "You don't have to sell us. We're already sold. Let's talk about how we make it happen," he said, as quoted in the article. She also credits early backing from Chief People Officer Kelly Jones as the difference between "a cool concept and a great product."
A non-product employee inside a product team
Tinnelly writes that the Vidcast team included her at every stage, from early prototyping and beta testing to briefing, marketing and drafting the social campaign. She worked with Salman and Tomas Tarasovic, the Product Manager on the project.
She says she was struck by how much the team used AI in its own work, from research and concepting to prototyping. She used AI as well, pressure-testing messaging with MyAgent and training it to create a weekly update and adoption dashboard for stakeholders.
Tinnelly says the experience improved her own work, since her clients are Cisco employees and she gained exposure to how the business builds and ships products. She sees parallels between the two fields: a "Rami-shaped part" of her job involves thinking about the future of work and pitching ideas, and a "Tomas-shaped part" involves researching, validating and refining them.
What it means for employees</h2>
For Cisco staff, the tool offers an on-demand alternative to scheduled coaching, available inside a video platform they can already use. The article does not give details on wider availability or pricing beyond its launch in Vidcast.
Salman says in the article that Tinnelly's "sophistication, humble enthusiasm, and focus on impact" sold him within the first minute, and that her patience and dedication were vital through launch and go-to-market. Tinnelly's own conclusion is that people outside product teams who have never written code can still help build new products. In her words, they need "curiosity, the courage to try something new, and a willingness to show up."
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