[Magdalen] Prezi presentations

[Marion Thompson]

I'm happy that you move in this rarified world of good presentations.  I 
do get out quite a lot and my heart tends to sink when I see it will be 
a PP presentation.  I remember one in particular from Trinity when a 
woman was brought in to speak to us about the 7 Secrets of Success or 
whatever it's called by Stephen Covey.  All on PP slides and all 
verbatum from the book!!!!  I could have made the same presentation.  
Ridiculous.  Buy the book and know as much as her!

On 3/10/2015 12:49 PM, Jim Guthrie 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
>
>