TJ Walker (speaker) critiques Prezi as a distracting presentation tool that encourages flashy effects over substantive speech preparation. He urges professionals (finance, government, accounting, energy) to focus on preparing engaging stories and practicing delivery rather than relying on zooming visuals; he favors simple PowerPoint use (single images, occasional video) and offers his speaking training services.
Chapters
What is Prezi? You may have heard of it, you may have seen it. It's a software program for presenters and it allows the graphics to sort of zoom in and out and twist. And it's fascinating to look at. It's interesting. It breaks up the monotony. It's engaging. It sounds great, sounds fantastic. Why wouldn't anyone use it? Why wouldn't everyone use it is really the question. Here's what I want you to think about. Those of you who've seen Prezi, you may have seen it and thought, well, that's a lot better than listening to some guy just stand up and drone on and on and on. Okay, fair. But let me ask you, what ideas do you remember from any Prezi presentation you saw six months ago, a year ago, two years ago? I ask that question to people all the time and the answer is nothing. Are they remembered? It was cool. Well, here's the problem. If you are in the business of designing cool videos and cool special effects, then a part of your message anytime you speak is that you create cool visual special effects. By all means, use Prezi or use something like that. But for everyone else in, for example, the finance business or you're in government or public policy or accounting or energy, you're not in the special effects video gizmo business. So don't distract people. Here's the huge problem with Prezi and all these other gimmicks is really what they are, their enablers. They enable people to avoid the inevitable. They enable people to avoid actually preparing an interesting speech, preparing interesting stories and case studies, and actually practicing on video so someone tries to sell you on Prezi. My personal opinion, a complete, utter waste of time and money. It's just a distraction. You need to have a good speech where you are simply speaking to people and people can understand your ideas and remember them because you described it, you talked about it in an interesting, compellable, compelling way. Do that and you'll be more effective than anyone using Prezi or any other software program. I'm not anti Software. I use PowerPoint, but I use it to put up one image at a time, occasionally video, if and only if there's a real reason for it. So in my business teaching people how to speak, I occasionally show small snippets of somebody speaking. But it can't just be zoom, zoom, zoom, bang, splash to dazzle. It doesn't work. I'm T.J. walker. I help people speak more effectively. If you would like help improving your own speeches and presentations, give me a call. Or check out what below our online course options, our public workshops every month, or our private training workshops conducted anywhere in the world.
