Prezi: Let the Presentation Revolution Begin!

by Terry Gault

I first met Angelie Agarwal in January 2009 when I saw her present with her blogging partner, talking about their killer blog: MuniManners.com.  We did a post about that Pecha Kucha presentation on January 27, 2009 titled, "MuniManners.com stellar presentation at Pecha Kucha #30".

Angelie met with me last Friday to give me a one-on-one training on a truly revolutionary presentation tool called Prezi, where she holds the role of Chief Evangelist.

The company started in Budapest, Hungary but has gained ground quickly in the U.S. 

The tool is a big paradigm shift away from PowerPoint and a welcome one! It's built on Flash and the tool works like a large presentation 'canvas' that can incorporate images, text and videos.  The tool allows for panning and zooming so that you can step back, look at the Big Picture or zoom into an image, pan to a block of text or a video or a grouping of any of the above. That is a BIG departure from the linear and severely limiting frame-to-frame progression of a typical PowerPoint slide deck.  Plus, it's often problematic to embed video in PPT.  Embedding a YouTube video in Prezi could hardly be simpler and the video launches automatically when you transition to it.  

In fact, as I started to use it, I saw it as half-way between PPT and film-making.  And over the last few years, I've taken up film-making first as a hobby and and will soon be launching our new video production company.  More on that soon!

The tool is web based and clearly embraces an 'open' philosophy allowing users to post their Prezi's and allow others to use them.  I can already hear the presentation veterans asking, "But what if I don't have a connection?  How will I present?"  Your Prezi's can be downloaded onto your desktop and presented from your machine, even when you don't have an internet connection.

In order to truly 'get' what Prezi is about, you need to see it.  A video of James Geary using Prezi at TED.com should give you some idea of how this tool works.  You can also play videos at their website.  

Good luck to you both, Angelie and Prezi!  The Henderson Group is in your corner.

It's interesting to note that TED Conferences invested in Prezi last summer, the first company they've ever invested in. 

You can contact Prezi directly.