Slides and swings

My stance prior to Thing 17

This may sound heretical, but I don't much like Prezi. I accept that its non-linear, scaleable and animated nature allows for more flexible usage, but I've never actually seen it implemented in a situation which called for non-linear, scaleable presentation, rendering it more like a Powerpoint presentation with the added disadvantage of giving viewers a nauseous headache. Slideshare is something I have a little more time for, but still tend not to engage with. It allows for more comfortable embedding in a web page and can provide a quick and attractive way to deploy snippets of information on a topic; however, they can be a bit dull and difficult to read if more than a bullet-point's worth of data is included on each slide, which limits their usefulness for larger topics. 

So; I don't like large flexible canvases and I don't like smaller, focused slides. Not easy to please! I think that I have slide fatigue. I don't get on well with visual and written data being presented together, and prefer to make my own connections and construct my own mental models from written data when given the choice, so will always take a somewhat hostile approach to this type of presentation tool. Nonetheless, I should have a go, so with this in mind I've decided to make a Prezi about some of my Library Camp experiences.

After trying Prezi

Prezi is... fun. I really enjoyed making my presentation, and think that it looks so much better than a Powerpoint with the same data ever would. I'm not evangelically converted or anything; it seemed to take about 3 times as long to complete as it would've in Powerpoint (although admittedly I was learning as I went along, and would probably be able to pull things together more quickly next time around), it didn't quite do everything I wanted it to do, and a few times I struggled to lock onto text I wanted to change, particularly when it had been rotated. Those are pretty minor gripes though, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone based on this experience. Indeed, several people asked what I was doing as I made the presentation, and now plan to have a play with it themselves. So yeah, two legs good, four legs bad...