PowerPoint and Keynote slides are sooooooooooooooooooooooo 2009…!

Back in the late 1990′s (yea, I’m old), I was able to easily impress my professor into giving me an “A” on a presentation. My trick? Using PowerPoint.

I was the only one in class who used it. Now, to be brutally honest, PowerPoint is epically boring. As a matter of fact, most PowerPoint presentations cause a communal groan.

Time for a new player…

Enter: Prezi

Prezi is an online presentation tool (there is an offline app available if you subscribe) with an interesting twist; it is non-linear.

It is not just a slide show, but a display of your creativity. Prezi allows you to lay out your presentation like a white board instead of as a slide show.

You can zoom in to your presentation to show what seem to be almost hidden details, or zoom out to show the entire picture to your audience. Gone are the trappings of slide order, now you can zip around to whatever points you want to make without the need for a print out or memorizing slide numbers.

It’s Best to See it in Action!

Below is an awesome demo available from their site:

And its Free (Almost)!

You can use a free version of Prezi which allows you to practice making shows which are watermarked and available for the general public to access; along with a mere 100mb storage.

You can opt to pay a yearly subscription of $59 or $159 to gain features like working offline, removal of the watermark, private content, and 500mb to 2gb of storage.

How’s This Work for IT Guys:

I have sat through many boring proposals and presentations.

Example: One of my co-workers was making the case to switch from CISCO switches to HP Pro Curve. He put together a Keynote presentation which looked pretty nice. It was so boring. Our director and treasurer glazed over.

I believe one of the board members constantly refreshed his email in hopes of an emergency which could excuse him from the presentation. The main issue was the tedious process of getting through the slides and having to re-explain things forgotten along the way.

With Prezi, you can spice up your presentations and allow your audience to see the big picture in a more engaging way. Make a presentation about network topography in PowerPoint and watch people fall asleep. Make it Prezi and watch their brains engage the eye candy.