We couldn’t be happier: the first talk visualized with Prezi at TEDGlobal conference back in July just appeared on TED.com. As we have posted about this before, New America Foundation researcher and geopolitics expert Parag Khanna spoke at the annual conference in Oxford, UK and he used Prezi to visualize his very interesting topic about countries reshaping constantly. TED also invested in Prezi since.

Please note that the Prezi you can see in the video above has been created by professional designers and include pre-made flash animations. Adding them to a Prezi is not a feature of our software now.

Yesterday, Parag took time to kindly join a short Q&A session about his experiences using Prezi back in Oxford.

Prezi: Thanks for choosing Prezi for your talk at TEDGlobal! What were your considerations when you have decided to switch?

Parag Khanna: Two of the flaws in cartographic depictions is that people toggle between maps which almost gives the impression that different regions aren’t connected, but I wanted to be able to flow between them so that the world appears an organic whole. Another is that border shifts are often depicted in sudden, jerky shifts, whereas in reality the “facts on the ground” can change and mutate slowly. Prezi allows to do both these things better.

For you, what is the main difference between Prezi and other presentation tools?

Prezi is very intuitive to use. It seems to allow one to implement one’s thoughts rather than having to adapt to clunky software.

How did Prezi help you explaining your topic?

I wanted to show the slow, morphing of borders and new vectors of influence like finance and demographics and infrastructure. Prezi allowed me to overlay this onto existing political borders.

How did it feel to speak with Prezi as a visual aid in the background?

It was very easy – and in fact having Prezi there was a really great substitute for having a prepared text since it visualized for me and the audience exactly what I wanted to say!

How do you think Prezi affects the audience’s understanding?

Prezi really helped people understand the range of influences at play in affecting borders, which are such a traditional and basic issue that it’s almost forgotten today.

Tags: Your prezis

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 at 11:08 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.