Presenting to a group can be a daunting task.
First, many people get anxious at the thought of a live presentation. Second, the content of the presentation needs to be created so it can be displayed. It is this piece of the presentation process I want to discuss in this post. For anxiety issues, google “speaking in front of a group”. You’ll find lots of great advice. The overwhelming majority of presentations are prepared with Microsoft’s PowerPoint. Why? Because nearly everyone has access to it, it’s been around for years, and there were few options. In the Apple iOS world, Keynote is the tool of choice. Think PowerPoint on steroids. In the corporate world however, there aren’t a lot of companies rocking iMacs and MacBooks.
So, PowerPoint rules. I hate PowerPoint. Really, really, hate it. My eyes instantly glaze over when i see the first PP slide on the screen. Why? The majority of PP presentations quickly devolve into walls of words, and that is bad. What happens when a wall of words appear on a screen? The entire audience reads the words, and more than likely, the speaker reads them out loud to us as well. Not the recipe for a good presentation, right? Even if the speaker is dynamic and interesting, much of the message is lost as the audience reads the wall of words and is not listening to the presenter. This is not new ground I’m covering here. Many presenters, coaches and experts have been pointing this out for years. Yet, it continues. How can your presentation, even a listing presentation be different? Images! Forget the words and be visual. Let your words be guided by the images on screen.
For nearly three years I have not touched PowerPoint unless corporate demanded it. My tool of choice is Prezi. Think mindmap with the power to zoom in and out, rotate, and basically dazzle. I talk about Prezi here. Just recently, however, I was turned on to a new tool, Haiku Deck.
This presentation wonder does lots of things very well. First, it is easy to use on my iPad. Most will agree that the other presentation programs out there difficult to use on tablets. Haiku Deck is an app built for the iPad. It also makes searching for images easier than any other program I’ve used. Simply search for images by typing in a search term and all images returned from the search are licensed for use. No more “stealing images” in a Google Image search. Haiku Deck does the filtering for you. You can also use your own images, so if you need a chart, screen shot, or one of your photos, simply insert it.
Haiku Deck currently offers 5 themes for free, and 11 more at $1.99 each or all 11 for $14.99. Pick a theme, upload your images, and add text if necessary. Haiku Deck handles text in the edit menu by giving the user 14 different layouts. These will not let you add a wall of words, but just a line or two to accentuate the message being delivered by the image. The presentation can be saved to HaikuDeck.com within the user's account. From here it can be shared via link or the embed code can be generated for online use. You can also annotate each slide if you desire.
There are great tutorials at HaikuDeck.com and within the app, so I don’t want to get too technical here. If you are looking for an easy to use, highly effective, mobile based tool for presentations, you have to give Haiku Deck a shot. Below is a link to a Haiku Deck I created on my iPad regarding Facebook Custom Friend Lists. I purposely chose a narrow, specific topic for the Haiku Deck, in order to show that it is not just for big, broad, idea based presentations.
I value your feedback. Leave a comment below or drop me a note at billrisser@gmail.com.
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