Producing Prime Presentations

Public speaking can be difficult, and with some people it can be even more difficult to sit through. With technology like PowerPoint and projectors, technology has really helped make public speaking easy to do and even tolerable to sit through. Here are some new presentations tools that will help take your next speech to the next level.

Poll Everywhere
In presentations, crowd participation is a solid tool to keep the audience's attention by getting people involved. A classic example is to ask the audience questions like, "With a show of hands, how many of you would rather be somewhere else right now?" Poll Everywhere is a free technology that has digitized hand raising, making it possible for audience member to respond to your questions using their smartphones. You can even display the question results for everyone to see. Using Poll Everywhere will make you appear like a tech savvy presenter, and make you feel like Bob Saget on America's Funniest Home Videos asking the audience to vote on the evening's winning video. Poll Everywhere works online using social media accounts or text messaging, and it can be used to find answers for poll questions that go along with your topic. The free service for Poll Everywhere allows you to hold polls for up to 40 people.

Ignite, PechaKucha, and Lightning Talk
Ignite, PechaKucha, and Lightning talk is not so much a standalone technology as much as a presentation method that makes use of the playback settings on your presentation media. This method has the speaker automatically play through their presentation slides while explaining each one. This guarantees that your presentation will be fast-paced and it also places a heavier emphasis on the Q&A time at the end. This is also a surefire way to avoid the pitfalls of getting lost in your notes or taking more time then you are scheduled for.

Prezi
With Prezi, you can retire your laser pointer to the pet toy box and replace it with the Prezi zoom feature. No matter what presentation media you are using, you can use the Prezi Zooming Interface tool (ZUI) to zoom in and out, and pan in any direction to highlight a line of text, video, picture, or anything else that you want to draw the audience's attention to. This can come in especially handy if the content of your presentation is loaded with items that might distract from the point you trying to make. Prezi's zooming tool is a free download from their website and uses Adobe Flash so it is compatible with many different platforms and browsers. Prezi also offers cloud-based services that you can subscribe monthly to and use to build your entire presentation and access it from anywhere.

PowerPoint is still the undisputed king of presentation technology, and Microsoft is planning to have this zoom feature available with PowerPoint 2013, set for release during Q1 of 2013. Although, you can also use Prezi's zoom in feature with your current version of PowerPoint.

Giving a presentation is hard enough, if you want to create a dynamic presentation that will leave a good impression on your audience, then it is good to incorporate as many helpful tools and technologies into your presentation that you can. If you would like the technological edge on your next presentation, then call Computerware at (703) 821-8200. We can provide you with tools like Microsoft PowerPoint, and help set you up with Prezi, and Polls Everywhere, as well as help you pick out a projector and PA system that will fit your needs and budget. If you ask us nicely, we will even go the extra mile and review your speech with you, call Computerware today!