Let your inner monologue flow!

Earlier this year I wrote a couple of posts that offered some Prezi tips. These two or three posts continue to drive the most traffic to Inflection Methods which tells me that people that love the cool new slick presentation platform continue to seek advice and input on how to effectively use it. This reality inspired me to offer up the result of taking my own advice.

I was invited to give a talk to a group of business leaders in the Philadelphia region in June and thought it the most opportune time to trot out my newly learned perspective on Prezi. Some details here on what I learned in the formal production of a 45 minute presentation in the tool in a moment, but what I discovered as I began to put virtual pen to virtual paper was that I still wasn’t quite certain how to manage the considerations of the way Prezi uses aspect ratio. So I clicked into my post on thinking like a director and was impressed that what I had written was actually quite helpful to someone trying who is looking to apply the power of the tools strengths. That probably sounds a little self-serving but just relating that because by the time I used my ‘think like a director when using Prezi post‘ as a resource it had been a couple of months since I touched the tool. . and it helped. So I’d recommend it if you are looking to master the aspect ratio element of Prezi.

The discussion was an introduction or overview of social media for business use. It is split into two sections. The first offers up some perspective on the essence of social media as a communication platform and the second is a tactical suggestion on how to use blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Here is a couple of minutes of the presentation covering the value of business blogging.

Here is the Prezi itself and a the six steps I used to create it follow  It was developed in a 4:3 aspect ratio and includes 78 individual points on the path.

Six Steps to Build an Effective Prezi

• Start on paper: Not my original thought – it is Garr Reynolds’ in his ‘Presentation Zen’. It works. Get a bunch of paper and just sort of start jotting down the elements of what you hope to communicate. Lay them out on a desk, up on a whiteboard, etc. to build a visual perspective of how you want your thought to flow
  
• Harness Your stream of consciousness: With the written plan of your Prezi just start at the first thought. For me it was the notion that I wanted to communicate to the audience how my perspective of social media has been formed since I first started paying attention in mid 2008. The first 14 points in the path are the result.
  
• Let the canvas dictate flow: This is the hardest thing to get used to. PowerPoint forces you into a linear thought process. Prezi completely obliterates that restriction. BUT it is uncomfortable at first. Allow the visual concepts to just sort of go where you naturally feel them going. What I found is that doing so allows you to find the order that is best suited to communicate the concepts. Be forewarned. The first couple of times through this process will result in rework of positioning as you determine what that order ought to be. The next tip will minimize this frustration and required rework
  
• Master Framing: Operating in the context of the aspect ratio that you are developing against AND committing to modest movement from one frame to the next does a number of things. (1) it restricts your ‘working space’ to within a reasonable section of the canvas for each major concept being communicated (2) Sets a natural progression of moving ‘away’ towards the completion of the thought. For example in my Prezi path points 1 thru 20 are ultimately one connected major concept that builds to a conclusion (context matters). By leveraging the 4:3 frame I was able to add more to the concept as it was discussed (3) Allows you to take maximum advantage of occasional zooming in and out. If there is a discrete detail that you want to underscore this is where a dramatic zoom comes in handy, essentially allowing you to sort of introduce a tangential thought that reinforces the main concept. (4) Most importantly proper use of framing allows you to reveal an important element of what you are talking about in a way that yields a powerful visual aid. Path points 14 thru 16 illustrate this effect.
  
• Image editing is critical: Prezi, in my opinion, works best with graphics. To effectively use graphics you need to consider how they look and how they interact with the canvas as well as what they look like as you zoom in or out. The most important thing you need to be able to do is edit images so that they smoothly transition to a transparent background. I use Corel’s Paintshop Photo Pro X3. I’m sure there are alternatives, this is just the one I use. I’m no expert with the tool but I do know how to make the background on images transparent and have discovered saving the image as a Portable Network Graphic (PNG) is the best alternative for maintaining that transparency
  
• Use Anchors: In PowerPoint I like to break up my slides with a recurring agenda slide. This lets the audience know what to expect and how to set their consideration of what you are saying. This doesn’t work in Prezi so what I did was use images that allow me to anchor sections of the presentation. Path point 27 introduces these anchors and the remainder of the presentation cycles through each.
  

These six steps resulted in what I feel was the best Prezi I have developed so far. More importantly the results provided an excellent visual aid during my talk. I would love it if you had your own tips or feedback to share as I’m always looking to expand my mastery of the tool. Please share them in the comments.