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Prezi: Presentations For Digital Natives

By Xurxo Martinez · On August 10, 2010

Forget about slides. In today’s hyperlink world, a classic presentation feels like being inside of a corridor without the option to enter any of the side doors.

If you’re still stuck on PowerPoint presentations, it may be time to try out more dynamic alternatives, like Prezi, which has the financial and advisory back of TED and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.

TechCrunch contributor Robin Wauters called Prezi “the coolest online presentation tool I’ve ever seen.” And Garr Reynolds, who coined the phrase ‘Presentation Zen,’ earlier this year declared Prezi a presentation tool more suitable for the digital natives than its competitors.

That’s a lot of praise for Prezi. So, let’s see what it’s all about.

Elevator pitch

Prezi is a flash-based nonlinear storytelling tool for creating dynamic multimedia presentations. The end result is not a set of slides, but a canvas where the user can zoom in and out, discovering contextual relationships.

Prezi’s strengths

As Prezi’s Community Manager, Zoltan Randai, explains, “slideshows haven’t really changed since the late 1950-s, when the first acetate slide projector hit the market, while Prezi matches the way we consume information on the internet.”

Prezi is more customizable and agile than Power Point or Keynote, and offers the ability to integrate video, .pdf documents and vector images.

Because it’s an online service, Prezi is not only a creation tool, but also a distribution platform. This is fostered by the fact that many “prezis” are created as public objects that anyone can see, embed, and even copy and modify.

To keep the final product private, you need to sign up for a paid plan, but since January students and teachers can get the basic paid plan (“Enjoy”) for free. This has helped boost traffic to their site.

In addition to educational purposes, Prezi can also be a powerful tool for businesses.

“Prezi allows the audience to get your points immediately, while they have a clear picture about relations, arguments, and the tiny details. Many customers use Prezi not only for business presentations, but also for project planning, market research and analysis. They use it as a media wall in their offices or on the smart board at meetings. But the most interesting way of using the tool is collaborating in workgroups,” says Randai.

As storytelling starts to be more important in all complex organizations—from

schools to companies—Prezi seems to be in a great position to become a basic tool for internal communication, and even as a journalism tool for multimedia pieces.

Some examples

The best way to learn what you can do with Prezi is to take a look at what others have done:

  • How to make business presentations
  • Sweet recipe to solving problems (a good example of Prezi’s animation capabilities)
  • Playing to Learn? (an example of an educational prezi)
  • MySpace LeWeb Keynote (by MySpace Mike Jones)

For more examples of public prezis, visit http://prezi.com/showcase/

Xurxo Martínez is an MCDM student. His focus is on storytelling and entrepreneurship. He worked as journalist and Product Manager for nine years in Spain, including companies such as Yahoo! This article was originally written for the class Digital Media Economics and Management, Spring 2010.

garr reynoldsjack dorseypresentationspreziTEDZoltan Randai
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Xurxo Martinez

A web journalist who doesn't write. I have nine-year experience managing information online in Spain. The first three years I worked as a regular journalist in Lavozdegalicia.es, spain' seventh most viewed digital newspaper. Later I decided to move to Madrid, in order to work for Terra Spain (Telefonica group) where I learned to work with multidisciplinary team groups, dealing with design, marketing, advertisement or development tasks. At Yahoo! Spain, as Media Product Manager, I worked hard with providers and developers, and get used to be in a team where one member was in Sunny Valley, other in Bangalore and a few more through the whole Europe. My following work (at ADN.es) was more editorial focused. As Head of News I had 13 people on my team (two sub-editors and several reporters). Later I became Head of Information, managing also the front page team and coordinating Culture, Sports, Science/Tech and Local teams too. Besides from December 2007 to April 2008 I worked in the team that created a whole new CMS (Content Management System) for ADN.es. Later I dealt with the redesign of a News social aggregator web called Fresqui.com. We changed it from a digg-like page to another more similar to an online media and more video and image oriented. After finishing the redesign and before enrolling at UW I worked for two months with the team that was in charge of the development, design and system areas in ADN.es. I helped them to refine a new CMS and to define the structure for the redesign of the spanish motor web www.km77.com. They have the best motor content in Spain but horrible web structure and looks. Social life online Friendfeed: http://friendfeed.com/seretuaccidente

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6 Comments

  • Eric Burgess says: August 10, 2010 at 11:51 am

    Thanks for the heads up Xurxo. I’ll be checking it out now!

    Reply
  • PowerPoint is dead, and Prezi’s what killed it | Scott Bush says: August 12, 2010 at 9:48 am

    […] different approach to sharing ideas with a room full of people—or the entire internet! Lots of folks have started noticing Prezi, as well as lamenting PowerPoint’s faults. I expect Prezi and […]

    Reply
  • Sudhar K says: September 6, 2010 at 5:37 am

    I think the true power of Prezi-like presentaiton/communication is not fully exploited yet. I am sure Apple and Microsoft will sooner or later build such features into their products – or bring competing ones. I think the power to communciate in lateral non-linear way is going to be a norm in the future.

    I agree Prezi or one of its successors will kill Powerpoint, but I don’t think it will die anytime soon. Powerpoint is pervasive because it is so easy to pull together a few bullets and slides – neither the skill of the presenter need to be great nor the expectation of the receiver is high.

    With Prezi you need a creative bent even if you aren’t a great communicator – otherwise you are better off staying with Powerpoint.

    Reply
  • xurxo says: September 6, 2010 at 11:17 pm

    Sudhar K, I completely agree: you really need to be a good communicator or storyteller to get the most out of prezi. The main difference with regular slides is that the program allows you to do it—communicate, tell a story—in a manner that can be natural for you, with quite a lot of freedom and ability to innovate. And that’s a blessing for someone who really has something to tell.

    Xx

    Reply
  • Storytelling with Prezi (rather than Death by Powerpoint) « Storyteller Uprising says: September 13, 2010 at 11:22 am

    […] contextual relationships) but I finally decided to give it a try after reading one of my students rave about it on Flip The Media.  True to my nature, I took my chances and took it for a test spin in front of 50 Very Important […]

    Reply
  • Book of Ra says: July 25, 2012 at 5:17 pm

    … [Trackback]…

    […] Find More Informations here: flipthemedia.com/2010/08/prezi-presentations-digital-natives/ […]…

    Reply
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