Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Small Business
Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in a small business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.
Refresh Your Presentation Skills (and Tool)
A Review by Todd Hoskins
I hate PowerPoint.
The tool itself is not the primary problem – it’s all the bad habits that have proliferated in business including too much text, too many slides, and the worst of all, reading a deck verbatim to an audience.
But, sometimes PowerPoint is necessary. If you must use it, I recommend absorbing Garr Reynolds‘ work at Presentation Zen.
For the rest of us who are free to be creative and experiment with new tools, I enthusiastically encourage you to check out Prezi. It’s well designed, simple, and will make any presentation not only more tolerable, but more memorable and enjoyable.
With PowerPoint, you use a template and create slides. Then you proceed through the slides (often with snazzy or annoying effects) in a linear fashion. With Prezi, you create a map populated with words, images, charts, video, etc. Don’t let that intimidate you. Really, you take all the stuff that you may want to use, get it out there, and then create groupings and a path.
Once you figure out the “zebra” navigation, it’s very easy. The flash technology animates the path you create within the map. Here’s an example:
Prezi highlights its “zoom” for good reason. The spatial relationships and animation allow the presenter to capture the big picture, drill into details, and show the connections between concepts. It’s not just theater, it’s effective.
It’s free, as long as you don’t mind the Prezi watermark and keeping your presentations public. Premium subscriptions start at $59/year and allow you to work offline and have increased storage capacity.
Summing Up â Is it worth it?
Enterprise Value: 5/5 â worth the 15 minute investment to learn
Entrepreneur Value: 5/5 â look sharper, break the bad habits
Personal Value: 1/5 â make a movie, not a presentation
