Make it POP: The Power of Prezi

• Trends
• January 26, 2015
• by Emily Turner

I’ll never forget the first time I was pleasantly surprised by a visual aid. I was facilitating a Persuasive Presentation Skills^SM training and taping the last of the participants’ five minute speech. While this gentleman didn't have the strongest delivery skills, he was a self-professed IT junkie. He impressed us all with the program he used to accompany his speech. At lunch, I pulled him aside to ask how he developed such spectacular PowerPoint slides, and it was then he shared his secret: Prezi.

For those of you not familiar with Prezi, the best description is “PowerPoint on steroids.” Prezi displays information as one large board that zooms in on information and images of your choice. With a little practice, you can take what should be a visual aid (as opposed to a dissertation viewed on a large screen) and turn it into something fluid and, more importantly, memorable.

There are several “pros” to Prezi and I have yet to find a “con:”

1. Prezi offers a free version, something cash-strapped organizations can use to impress on a budget.
2. Prezi is collaborative in nature. Once you have an account, you can share, edit and develop your Prezi with anyone you choose, no matter their location.
3. The “zoom effect” and flexibility innate in Prezi allows you to bypass the linear approach and jump around during your presentation.

One of the biggest struggles clients face during internal meetings with executives is being unable to deliver a presentation in a linear manner. “I can never cover all of the slides I’ve prepared. The execs ask a question and take me in a completely different direction,” said one of my recent students. How many of you experience this kind of disruption? Aside from redirecting your executives back, Prezi is an excellent tool to do just that during a presentation.

For those of you that know us, we live and breathe through our collection of video examples. Prezi is hands-down the easiest format I've used to effortlessly load video and audio files. There is also an element of fun and creativity when using Prezi.

Lastly, despite this rave review, Prezi has not paid me for this endorsement. All of us at Spaeth are out to instigate a visual aid revolution. I encourage you to break out of the mold and try something new. Not only will you wow your co-workers, those executives just might take notice.