Got a presentation to do at work next week. Given the audience and what i’ll be presenting I will be presenting to (marketing types) I feel something a bit more interesting than a standard Powerpoint type of presentation will be appropriate. I’ve seen Prezi presentations and I think that will do fine. I’ve been looking at using Prezi and it seems to be a cloud based subscription thing. I only need to use it once so was thinking about signing up for their 14 day free trial and using it anyway (I might end up subscribing as I do a lot of presentations as part of my job anyway).

One thing I can’t work out is the offline-capability of the tool. I would create the presentation online, but for the presentation I won’t have internet access so will have to deliver it offline. You can download your Prezi and show it offline, but what i’m struggling to ascertain is that in order to run it offline do I need to download software onto the PC to enable it to run?

Cheers.

I really wouldn’t. Prezi is bloody awful, and when used with loads of zoom and spin effects will only make your audience queasy rather than impress them.

It’s not the format of slides, but what you’re saying they should be interested in. Talk with them and use minimal slides. 🙂

On Prezi, I’m not a fan, but you can save for offline use. No special software IIRC

Some folks love it. It makes some people giddy. My view is content is king. Whizzy graphics won’t help if there’s no message.

I tend to fall back on PowerPoint–>PDF just because that’s the way things are done. I prefer Keynote as it seems to push harder for fewer words on a slide.

One neat option is emaze

This Quora discussion might help.

LaTeX

😉

I used Prezi for a while, but went off it. The whizzy effect isn’t helpful, and can even make you sick. You can indeed use it offline, but I would stick with some nicely presented PP slides.

Agree with comments above, Prezi is all whizzy effects but simply distracts from content which is king!

There are still plenty of other ways to differentiate from the standard type presentation in PowerPoint if that’s what’s required.

Thanks. the content is more graphical rather than wordy, so I won’t be using the slides to list bullet points or anything like that, it will mainly consist of graphics that I will be talking around (explaining engineering to non-engineers) and some media content. I appreciate the comments regarding the zooming, but It’s only a short pitch so want to create some visual impact rather than a simple slide-show. the company I work for is always well behind the curve when it comes to things like this and Prezi is the current flavour of the month so is guaranteed to woo the audience even if I don’t!

Prezi is the current flavour of the month

Are you sure? The last time I saw a (bloody awful) Prezi presentation was at the ICS State of the Art in 2011.

boss had a thing for it, the key selling point seems to be for those that think death by powerpoint is a problem with powerpoint.

In fact one of the best presentations I saw was in powerpoint, it was a dull topic but the presenter had managed to leave sounds on every transition and although he had done this about 20 times this was the first time in a room with sound. After 20 mins we agreed that in the interests of professionalism we would all come back next week as nobody could stop laughing.

Thanks all. Prezi is flavour of the month in my organisation, which is pretty backward with regards IT. I know what people mean about the movement of Prezi, it can be distracting, but i’ve seen some really smart presentations on Prezi and the same rules apply regarding creating a Prezi presentation as with a Powerpoint. In this case I do need some visual aids as i’m presenting a pretty dry topic to an audience who probably won’t be that interested, so need to make some form of visual impact. I hate PP presentations usually – people just talking around bullets – and I find the slide transitions in PP just as annoying as too much movement and zooming in something like Prezi. I tend not to do that and use the slides as a summary of what i’ve said anyway, but that won’t work in this case – it also need to be a pitch that will stand alone when reviewed afterwards.

eMaze looks like it has some interesting templates.

@Kit – Haha! LaTeX 🙂

I did a presentation once with LaTeX, having had a great experience report writing with it. Think it’s fair to say the benefits aren’t as clear for presentations 😉

If someone tells me they are using it I mange a fixed smile and say ok then and will that be the free version whereby this entire live presentation relies on the venue internet connection not throwing its toys out of the pram. Oh and would you like to give me your PoserPoint back up for me to be ready to switch to. Oh you don’t have a back up, we’ll never mind as I won’t know it’s gone wrong as I won’t be looking as I don’t want to get sea sick.
Having said that the last one I was handed by a group of radiography students was actually very good, it was very subtle and was basically a PowerPoint presentation with nice smooth transitions. They also had a back up presentation. So actually it can be very good but you want the audience to feel they’ve just seem a normal presentation with a some nice transitions. Overdo it and everyone will feel sick and not remember a word you said