Power of the Prezi

Today, I’ve been working on a presentation for our company’s annual conference taking place in a couple of weeks. We have developed a character aimed to bring about awareness of our leadership programs, written a story about her and will now present her to the masses. The story is tongue-in-cheek clever, the character ‘hip and cool’ so now I have my work cut out for me to make the presentation equally fantastic.

When sitting in our initial marketing/presentation meeting a few months ago, we brainstormed ways to make this character come to life. As you might expect, PowerPoint was almost the only idea mentioned. And I hate PowerPoint. If utilized correctly, it can be an somewhat effective way to present. Unfortunately, the slides are almost always overcrowded, filled with either sensory overload or monotonous boring facts. Below are some examples helping prove my point from today’s Wall Street Journal. If your slides look like these, yes this is a cue to make some changes.

So in said meeting, I suggested we use Prezi. What’s Prezi? It’s the best kept presentation secret. It’s PowerPoint on steroids. It’s awesome. And easy to use. And free. And AMAZING. While it takes a little while to get used to, the results are worth the extra effort. Why? Because it looks professional and, at the same time, exciting. After all, there are only so many PowerPoint templates you can use to attempt to make yours stand out from the masses. I use it for work. Here's an old example. My mom (high school business teacher) uses it in her classroom and even makes her students use Prezi instead of PowerPoint. Cool, huh?

I’m telling you this because, as young professionals, we tend to be significantly younger than every other person in any given meeting. Thus, we have pressure to be creative yet act professional, buy in to old ideas but still think outside the box to develop new ones. And while Prezi isn’t going to solve all of our so called “YP hardships” it’s a start. Enjoy.