Last week at LeWeb – one of Europe’s most important internet conference organised annually in Paris – MySpace COO Mike Jones used Prezi for his keynote. News ran fast on Twitter, it seemed like everybody was chatting about Mike’s presentation, and the tool he used. Scrolling through the tweets we learned that the prezi was actually forged by Sean Percival, who among many things works as a media consultant for MySpace. Sean kindly accepted our request to share his experiences with Prezi. His most important message to our authors is: “don’t be afraid of open spaces, learn to tell your story through movement and images, not just text!”
Click below for the interview!
You have a very interesting job at MySpace, can you tell a little about that?
I am the Director of Ninja Projects. I’m actually just a consultant for MySpace right now, sometimes I like to say I do mercenary work for them. I understand official titles are required these days but I really don’t like them. They can limit your role or worse, limit the outside world’s perception of your abilities. At the end of the day I help them in several departments, mainly marketing.
How did you find Prezi?
I first heard about Prezi through a post on TechCrunch. I’ve been looking for better presentation software for years now so I was immediately interested in the product. It took me a while to build my first Prezi but from there it was love at first slide.
Any switch-to-Prezi experiences? Was it easy or hard?
A lot of people ask me if Prezi is hard to use and I always tell them “Only for the first 10 minutes”. Beyond that it becomes a very fluid experience thanks to the intuitive user interface and toolset. Once you create your first path and really see it action any switching frustrations are long forgotten.
Why have you decided to use Prezi for this year’s LeWeb conference?
Our COO Mike Jones (MySpace) wanted a presentation that was more dynamic than the usual bullet point snooze fest. Of course Prezi came right to mind so I pitched the group on giving it a try. Thankfully Mike liked it as well and we started to outline the Prezi right away.
How do you think Prezi’s approach helps understand your points and goals?
Prezi helps guide the story but it doesn’t lead it, that task is put back on the speaker where it belongs. With Prezi you get the chance to visually wow them for a moment then bring the focus right back to you as you tell the story.
How much time did it take to create the final prezi?
Hard to say exactly but we definitely put a few hours into its production. To tell our story we had to create several of the graphical assets you see in the final version from scratch. Since MySpace is a rather large company we were lucky enough to have a few people working on this one. That reminds me to send a big thank you to Corinne Almirol and the MySpace design department who really made this Prezi shine.
What would you suggest to new Prezi authors, what are your keys to make a good prezi?
I would first recommend reading a great book called “Presentation Zen”. It was published in a Pre-Prezi world but still serves as a wonderful guide to creating a compelling presentation. When it comes to Prezi specifically, don’t be afraid of open spaces, embrace your Prezi canvas which sometimes feels like it never ends. Finally, learn to tell your story through movement and images, not just text. Make the audience hang on your words and not your bullet points. Use Prezi as your backdrop, as the digital ambiance to your story.
Tags: Your prezis
I’ve been searching for this exact information on this topic for a while.
[...] often seen on stage in places like Davos, TED conferences, who also has invested in Prezi, and LeWeb. Robert Scoble is in love with it, and it’s certainly not every day Umair Haque describes a [...]
Quite so.