Innovation is great in all aspects of our daily working live’s. But there is such a thing as over-innovation, and that can really get in the way of productivity and business success.
Just recently I took a call from a customer of ours who we recently trained in the dark art of Prezi. Originally they came to us because they were looking to make their presentations more engaging, more memorable, and more innovative. Of course Prezi really helped with all of those objectives plus it’s helped them tell much better stories.
Moving from PowerPoint to Prezi was a great move for their sales team, but for some reason the CEO didn’t want to stop there. They decided to go even further, and bought each sales person 10 iPads (yes 10!). In their meetings to new prospects the sales guys hand out an iPad to each audience member. Then they open the Prezi on their own iPad and link all of the audience members into that as a remote presentation. As the sales person clicks through the Prezi it also advances on all 10 of the iPads.
Just reading that back is confusing enough!
Now you might be thinking ‘how innovative’, and I’m sure it has impressed a lot of people when it works. However there is a lot of stuff that can go wrong and will ultimately get in the way of the presentation:
- All the iPads need charging the night before the presentation. Thats a lot of power and could be embarrasing if they arent fully charged and run out of juice!
- Some audience members might accidentally press the iPad home button and log out of the Prezi app. That will disrupt the flow of the presentation
- If there isn’t a good wifi for all iPads to connect to then you cant use the Present Remotely feature in Prezi
- Every audience member is looking down at an iPad when they should be focusing on the presenter
Innovate with a good story
If you are also looking to bring some innovation to your presentations then Prezi can definitely help. Before you spend time on building your Prezi and worrying abut the technology I would recommend you focus a lot more of your efforts on the story you are going to tell.
Make sure that the story has a logical flow and even try and tailor it to the customer or audience you’ll be presenting to.
Simple use of tech
Rather than spending a fortune on iPads I would keep the level of technology being used to a minimum. I normally present with either an iPad or laptop and connect that to a 3M micro projector that is extremely small and light to carry.
Your audience doesn’t want to be wowed by technology. They would much prefer a great story, a great presentation, and a great presenter.
And of course something that isn’t PowerPoint slides is always good 😉
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