When I randomly ask a friend or colleague to make a presentation for me, almost everyone uses Microsoft PowerPoint. When I ask that person why he chose for PowerPoint the presentation he answers: “What else?” Apparently, people are not aware of any alternative presentation tools. A little bit strange I think, because there are definitely other presentation tools. Another reaction was: “Because everyone uses PowerPoint”. Of course there are some benefits of using a tool everyone knows, but there are also some negative points. For instance, you are one of the three parties that get an opportunity to become a partner. The chance that your competitors use PowerPoint is very high. In other words, you can distinguish yourself using another tool and at the same time you can show that you can think “out of the box”.

To distinguish myself during presentations, I use an alternative presentation tool called Prezi. Prezi is a Flash application that enables you to easily create an interactive presentation. In this video is explained what makes Prezi different from PowerPoint, and it is also a demonstration how Prezi looks like. You can find a lot of examples and explanations on their website. Personally I like these examples: Singing bridges & Discovering IE University.

As employee of the Business Intelligence department of Caesar Groep I use Prezi for presentations. Last week for instance, I gave a presentation to the Board of Directors and the Management Team of our customer. Together with a colleague we had 20 minutes to give them advice and justify that we did a good job. After the presentation the first reaction was: “Wow, we have never seen such a clear and interactive presentation before.” I believe that it was clear because it was interactive. We did not lose a second of their attention, which resulted into a good understanding of our presentation.

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Tags: Caesar Groep, NWoW, PowerPoint, Presentation, Prezi, Tool