[Magdalen] Prezi presentations

[Jim Guthrie]

First, if you've never been to a great PP presentation, I feel sorry for you --  
though maybe you should get out more ? <g>

PP presentations depend on a number of factors --  the presenter, the purpose, 
the slides and the audience.

The presenter needs to have something of a "show biz" personality -- no matter 
what the circumstance.  Think of the person who reads that First Lesson in 
Church Sunday morning in a dull mumbling monotone <g>. Some people simply should 
not be doing these.

Teachers and professors may simply put up slides of the salient parts of their 
lectures to help those students whose note-taking abilities aren't too good. 
Combine that with good illustrations and you;ve got a great lecture, I think.

Some of the various historical societies I'm involved with such as the Society 
for Industrial Archeology and some of the Canal and Railroad groups have been 
doing slide presentation since the first days of 35 mm slides. The witch to 
Power Point has improved the quality of these immensely -- especially with 
digitized photos (and scans of some of those old slides).

One of the problems with PP. is that inserting an animation to short film clip 
is awkward -- that's why I use the WordPerfect version, along with a program 
called "Still Motion Video" which is designed (among other things) to use the 
"Ken Burns Effect" to do close-up pans and zooms of photos. which make a program 
much more lively.  PP does not all the smooth transitions in and out of these.

The audience is important too -- I do a couple of different programs related to 
Anthracite and Railroads and Maps --  and I find that some groups simply can’t 
get enough of some of these programs, while others simply fall asleep or go out 
for coffee. The "little old lady" groups who believe history ends when George 
Washington came through town are the worst IMHO.

Many business presentations are terrible -- because they're not done by people 
with pizzazz or with a sense of how to reach an audience, but rather by job 
title. Those are deadly, to be sure.

One of the problems with church-oriented PPs is that the presenter thinks they 
need to be somber and "church like" rather than Hollywood, which in terms of PP, 
is deadly as well.

Cheers,
Jim Guthrie