Presentations - Thing 20

Presentations used to be part and parcel of my daily job as a subject librarian.  Since moving to Borrower Services, I don't tend to do any sort of presenting on a grand scale.  I always carry out a briefing session before the start of the academic term in order to remind staff in my particular library about the quirks of the system, things that have changed over the summer months and usually draft in Library Systems and Research Support so they can have their say as well.

One such presentation was carried out in September 2011. You may ask why do I remember this one - well I had only be in post for 1 year, we had recently introduced a new library management system so we still had lots of issues to iron out, and it was the one and only time I used Prezi.



I was under a lot of pressure at this time as I had taken leave just before the start of term, and before having to present this information. I was trying to set up this presentation at home without any real indication of how it would appear in a work environment. The result was that I actually prepared 2 presentations - one on PowerPoint, and the other on Prezi. I had no training in Prezi so it was a case of learning as I went.

From memory, I liked the idea of using something different. We've all had death by PowerPoint and I wasn't keen to submit my colleagues to that. I found Prezi to be fiddly to set up and use.  That might be selective memory, it might have been early days for Prezi and I was constantly thinking 'Why didn't I stick to PowerPoint?'

At the time, I went with Prezi. I was concerned about the 'motion sickness' element of it and actually made the audience aware of this.  Everyone seemed to survive though. Prezi was good as it allowed me to emphasize the connection between different points. You would swing into see the text and then swing out and on to see the next point. One member of the audience with visual impairment said that it worked very well for her as the text was of a consistently large font throughout instead of Powerpoint where it tends to get smaller as you go through your points and subpoints. All in all, I think it worked very well from the audience point of view.

And what about me? How did I feel?

Well I was glad that the presentation was over - presenting in front of your peers is always more nerve-wracking than a group of students. Despite having set the presentation up, I wasn't always sure of what was coming next. I preferred Powerpoint from this aspect - it presents the information in a much more linear manner. I can't remember whether Prezi allowed you to print out an overview - if it didn't, then maybe it does now. I didn't feel very confident about presenting the material but that's not necessarily all down to Prezi.

My advice is to really think about the information you want to get across and the connection between the points. This is where Prezi comes into its own so it's best that you know how each point and subpoint are connected to each other. Also, practice, practice and practice some more. You really need to know the sequence of your points in order to come across as confident.

Coincidentally my work now has a training course on an 'Introduction to Prezi' so as a tool it must be going to stick around. It would be good to attend this training to see what exactly I missed.  I'm sure there was a lot as I was so keen to get it finished but I probably didn't scratch the surface of what the basic free version can do.