A Prezi that works really well – quelle surprise?

I love Prezi as a visual aid as long as it’s used really well. I’ve whinged about it often, and I’ve written books, articles and posts imploring presenters, Prezi and the world to stop with all the ‘Look, isn’t it amazing to zoom, and spin…’ stuff.

It doesn’t often happen, but Prezi and I agree on an example of a really effective Prezi, and it’s one of theirs! The designers are using their own software to support their telling of a story, and they are using the fundamental principle of:

Zoom in for emphasis, pan for detail and zoom out for context

How did this transformation happen? It seems that the Prezi team has started to see itself as a presentation enabler (a service that helps their users stand out as expert communicators) rather than just a software provider. That means that their own use of their own product has moved on from ‘Geeks playing with their clever toy’ to ‘presentation experts demonstrating how a cool tool can help differentiate in a very crowded market’. Well done.

This ‘Prezi Team’ presentation looks good, is simple and works well enough to be used as a support for a speaker in a presentation, as a video with a narration, or even as a standalone ‘autoplayer’ if a bit more of the narrative appeared as subtitles – (the only time that you’ll hear me asking for more text on the visuals in any presentation).