Prezi: One Thing In Hungary, Another In South Africa

So what is Prezi, you may ask?

Well, in todays’ modern world, you do not want to be left out the loop. You will experience real FOMO if that happens. Like I did (gulp). You could simply Wikipedia it and it will tell you that Prezi is a new way of doing presentations. And that is exactly what Prezi means in Hungary. It’s the short form for presentations.  There is a strong Hungarian connection because its three developers are from that Eastern European nation. However, any South African (well, the white English speaking ones) will tell you that a Prezi is a cute term used for present or gift. “Hooray, it’s Christmas, let’s open our prezzies!”

So what about the presentation?

It was developed to replace slide shows. It seems like you can do things to the objects on your presentation. You can zoom in, rotate them, group different objects together. Sounds great! Doesn’t it? Well, apparently observing a Prezi Presentation with all its dynamic movements, (and I’m sure when it’s being operated on a large screen) can bring on the feeling of nausea. Oh dear. The last thing you want to do is hand out a few brown bags to the board of Directors you are presenting to before you begin. Come on…it can’t be that bad. Otherwise people would have to leave 3D movie cinemas all the time during all the action scenes.

It still sounds amazing though!

Throwing up aside, the thought of being able to control various objects in your presentation by moving them around, linking them, combining them; sounds very awesome. It must give such a sense of power, control and style. It reminds me of the scene in District 9 (you know the one?) where the alien is in the space ship and is moving objects around on the big clear screen with his fingers. Rapid movements and fluorescent symbols moving just as he wants them to-and that’s how he controlled the space craft! Very cool! Although another criticism is the limited amount of colours and font. Well, let’s face it, humans can be frivolous and things must look good. But I don’t think that should stop the developers. It sounds really remarkable and I’m sure it won’t be long before all presentations are Prezi presentations.

What else can the Prezi do?

With Prezi, people who are geographically separated can co-edit presentations together in real time. With Prezi, you can also work off-line. It is perfect for e-learning and edutainment. Many speakers at TED talks have used Prezi Presentations and some users at the World Economic Forum also used it. The coolest thing is that is available for anybody to use.