[Magdalen] Prezi presentations

[Jay Weigel]

My S/O knows how to do a good PowerPoint presentation, and I'm not saying
that because I'm partial. I'm saying it because I've had to sit through so
many godawful ones! I've had the pleasure of sitting through exactly one of
his, which happened to be a program for our rock club, and it was quite
well done, and funny too.....even had the kids who were present engaged and
laughing. So I know it's possible. I haven't seen him do any professional
ones because we don't move in the same circles professionally, which is
just as well <g> but I'm sure they are equally good.

On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 12:49 PM, Jim Guthrie <jguthrie at pipeline.com> wrote:

> 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
>
>