#21st Century: 3 Free Web-based Applications that Spice Up Presentations
I do quite a bit of work in PowerPoint (as do most professional these days) and have come to realize that my clients have varying appetites for how complex and fancy my presentations are. In certain industries, the clients would prefer to have a simple white background with bulleted points. Nothing else. Maybe some clip art if we're feeling excited. Then I have other clients who LOVE to see well engineered, well designed, aesthetically award-winning slides.
More recently, I've come across a few clients in the consumer electronics industry who are looking for something new. PPT just doesn't cut it for them anymore. Their executives prefer to see information presented in more creative ways. I don't believe that I am the only one with this experience, and until MS decides to really spruce up the functionality of PowerPoint, it will remain relatively constrained in it's ability to showcase information in new creative ways. I'd like to share a few alternatives to PPT that I've been exploring recently (admittedly these are by no means 'new' - but not widely used with my clients).
Wordle: Ironically created by a former IBMer, this application generates “word clouds” from text that you provide. The more often the words appear in the text you provide, the larger they are relative to the other words. Here is an example of a worlde based on my last blog post. I've found wordle particularly effective in showing discussion trends (or analyzing clusters of free form text).
Prezi: The video explains this concept much more appropriately. Be careful with this one, too much complexity in the presentation may actually cause nausea...
Easely.ly:This tool allows you to create and share neat infographics. It has an easy-to-use drag and drop functionality that makes it easy to learn and efficient. I have recently used easely.ly to create infographic representations of data analysis. Rather than the typical tables, bar graphs, and pie charts, these infographics make it easier to communicate a message. Here's an example:
I must make a disclaimer that all of these tools are free and open to the public, which means everyone should be careful about using sensitive, confidential information. Prezi has a paid version that allows for security encryption, but the other two share your products publicly. Enjoy!