Father of peer-to-peer networking sees infinite possibilities with Prezi Reuse

In our series of introducing inspirational prezi authors and their works, we have a very interesting person for you to meet today.  Michel Bauwens is founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives and works with a global group of researchers in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property. He has been an analyst for the United States Information Agency, and knowledge manager for British Petroleum (where he created one of the first virtual information centers) as well. Michel used Prezi for his TEDxBrussels talk this Fall and kindly answered our questions after the conference. We wanted to know his points on how to create a good prezi, and what are the most important considerations when speaking in front of an audience.

First, thanks for choosing Prezi for your talk at TEDx Brussels! What motivated you to decide to use this tool instead of your old presentation software?

Having worked for business for two decades, I'm of course very familiar with ppt, but always thought it had negative side effects, in promoting linear thinking modes and bite sized communication, but there were really no alternatives that I knew of. When I saw Prezi, I immediately thought that this would be something qualitatively different. In my vision of it, it's a universal canvas in 3 dimensions, where I could throw a synthesis of the findings of our 10,000 page wiki at p2pfoundation.net, then create various paths for various audiences. The possibilities to create all kinds of non-linear visualizations is a real added value.

How do you think Prezi and mindmaps relate?

Mindmaps are fine, but they generally do not allow for sophisticated presentations for demanding audiences, and Prezi offers that.

You have kindly offered your prezi to our community for reuse. How do you think presentation remixing and knowledge sharing can affect the way we tell our stories?

In my case, what I would love is for people in the open, p2p and commons oriented communities to use the Open Everything mindmap, which is the essential part of the presentation, and to indeed consider it as a full universe; and another layer would then be the many different paths for different audiences. I see infinite possibilities. Because it is so easy to add video, audio and all kinds of graphics and visualizations, it's ideal for narrative approaches, and for more empathic communication.

How did Prezi help you explain your topic at TEDxBrussels?

My talk went well overall, but given the short time, 18 minutes, I regret that my path contained too much material for such a short term. Choosing is difficult, but a must.

What would you suggest to new Prezi authors--what are your key considerations when building a public talk?

For me the challenge is to keep the balance between the overall view, and the detailed approach, and to create a interaction between the whole and the parts. I still think that for non-techie guys like me, making a Prezi is still a challenge, but perhaps that's because I lacked any training.

Michel's prezi took just a few hours to create: it's based on his Open Everything mind map that we have imported in .pdf format. Then we built relations and created a storyline in Prezi with frames to zoom on, and a path to walk through.

CEO of Creative Commons offers all his prezis for reuse

Joi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons (the organization that provides free copyright consistent licenses for people to share and build upon the work of others) used Prezi for his talk at TEDxDubai a few weeks ago. When we reached out for him to ask about his experiences and thoughts on Prezi's new Reuse feature, he immediately offered all his prezis for our community to reuse. Read on to learn what Joi thinks about creating a good presentation with Prezi, and feel free to reuse his prezis stored in our Library!

Thanks for choosing Prezi for your talk at TEDxDubai. What motivated you to use this tool instead of your old presentation software?

Prezi provides context, fits my style of speaking much better than slides. I think it helps the audience understand how the concepts are related.

You have kindly offered all your public prezis to our community for reuse. How do you think remixing will affect presentation culture?

This is absolutely excellent and key. All of our talks are inspired by others and using and reusing material should significantly improve the quality of all of our talk. I think it would be good to come up with a way to give attribution and set up social norms for this. You should use Creative Commons licenses too. ;-)

What would you suggest to new Prezi authors, what are your key considerations when building a public talk?

You have some great tutorials, but I think the important thing is to sketch the concepts that you want to discuss. Then, create the assets and do the screenshots. Then, create the frames and orientations for the key concepts, drop the assets in. Then work on the path and adjust the frames as necessary.

Feature Release: New Prezi Editor

Less menus, more options. Easier text editing, upgraded Transformation Zebra and YouTube integration: the new editor has half the menus of its predecessor, while it has more features and a welcome video as a bonus.

See the complete feature list and changes after the jump. For detailed feature introduction, see the updated Prezi Manual or watch a prezi of all the changes complete with keyboard shortcuts!



Edit Mode:

1. Text and Place modes have been merged into a single bubble called Write.


2. Double click anywhere on the canvas to create new texts or edit existing ones.


3. Click any object once to select it and use the Transformation Zebra tool.


4. Text and paragraph styles are now shown and can be switched when a textbox is created/edited.


5. Import YouTube videos by double-clicking to open a textbox, then paste in the YouTube video's link.

Show Mode:

1. Use Show mode to navigate and present your prezi.


2. In Show mode all the menus, including the main menu, are set to autohide, and appear when you move your mouse near them.


3. Use the UP and DOWN arrow, your scrollwheel, or the Zoom buttons for zooming while presenting, but not SPACEBAR, since it is the mode switcher key now. Press SPACEBAR while Editing to quit a submenu, press again to switch to Show mode, and again to switch back. You can do this forever, or even just hold down SPACEBAR, to enter Show mode temporarily as long as you release the key. Takes longer to describe than to do it: just go ahead and try it now.


4. Use LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to step forward and backward while presenting.


5. Full screen now can be reached from the Show menu as well as from the bottom-right Navigation tools.

Transformation Zebra:

There is a new button, a + sign, on Prezi's emblematic editing tool indicating a new sub-menu: Bring Forward (previously Up), Send Backward (previously Down), Duplicate, Delete and Select more (add new objects to a group selection).


Path:

1. Pressing Path will enable you to add an object to your path right away.


2. Press Delete All to delete the whole path.


3. New feature: Capture View, indicated by a camera icon, creates a bracket frame from the current view, and adds it to the end of the path.

Name changes:

1. Style is now Colors & Fonts.


2. Line menu is now called Shapes. You can find Shapes under the Insert menu.


3. Media menu is now called Insert. You can upload a file to your prezi under Insert menu.

Hotkey changes:

1. Pressing SPACEBAR serves as a toggle between Show and Edit mode. If you are in a sub-menu, pressing SPACEBAR takes you back to the main Bubble menu.


2. Pressing and holding SPACEBAR will take you temporarily to Show mode. While there, you can navigate or click with the mouse, or use the LEFT/RIGHT arrows to move back and forth in the path the path. When you release SPACEBAR, you get back to Edit mode.


3. ESC serves to remove fullscreen, if applicable.


4. In Show mode the LEFT and RIGHT keys will move you on the path backward and forward respectively. UP and DOWN keys will zoom in and out. Zooming out with the DOWN arrow works as Smart Zoom: it brings you up to the next largest enclosing or crossing frame object.


5. There are new shortcuts for some of the menu functions. The Frames menu can be reached by pressing 'F'. Pressing 'S' takes you to Shapes menu. Loading a file is possible by pressing 'L' and Path menu can be reached by pressing 'P'.


6. You can use CTRL+D for duplicating an object, and you can use CTRL+Z, CTRL+Y and CTRL+S for Undo, Redo, Save respectively.

Other:

1. Easy to reach Zoom Buttons help you at the right edge of the canvas.


2. Undo/Redo, Save and Exit are now in the upper right corner, together with Help.


3. There is a friendly welcome video when you open the new editor for the first time: it helps you get up and running in 3 minutes.

Feel free to play around with the new editor while retaining access to the old editor. You can choose which one to work with till February 8 -- to avoid the stress of learning new features and names just before an upcoming presentation. On Feb 8, the old editor will permanently retire, and will have a nice poster in the Prezi Hall of Fame. Beware: once a YouTube video has been inserted, you can only open and edit your prezi with the new editor. We're excited to get your feedback!

New Release Features: Educational License, Reuse, Learn Center

Besides the new editor, we introduce three additional features today:

1. Educational license: long-awaited feature requested by students and educators.


2. Prezi Reuse: share a copy of your prezis with others to use as a template.


3. New learn center: multimedia lessons and a community space to share your thoughts.

See how these shiny new things work after the jump!

Educational License

In response to a growing demand, (read the open letter to the Prezi CEO, demanding a school license) we developed an educational license pack. Students and teachers can now create private prezis for free. They can have Prezi Desktop at a special price. Upon verification of student/teacher identity, Prezi EDUEnjoy is free and Prezi EDUPro comes with a special educational discount.

If you are a teacher/student and already use Prezi:

Have a Public account? - upgrade to EDUEnjoy for free.

Have an Enjoy account? - upgrade to EDUPro for free! (Enjoy and EDUPro have the same price: $59. As an Enjoy user, you need to provide your credit card data to buy EDUPro, since it's a different product. You can start using it straight away without being charged. In accordance with our recurring payment system, you will be charged $59 when your current license expires).

Have a Pro account? - You can switch to EDUPro once your current license expires. Cancel your subscription by hitting the "Cancel" button on your settings page. You can use your current account during the remaining time of the year. Once it expires, go and sign up for EDUPro!

Prezi Reuse

This new feature allows you to offer a copy of your prezis to everyone for content remixing. If you have a Public license, the reuse option is checked by default when you create a new prezi. Of course, you can uncheck it with a click to keep your content from being accessible by others. If you have an Enjoy or Pro license, you can share your published prezis for reuse by marking the dedicated checkbox. You can find prezis offered for remix in the reuse library.

Save a copy of interesting prezis, and use them as templates for your own work!

Why will you like this?

1. It's easier to get inspired as you play around with an existing prezi, replacing texts and images as you build your version.


2. Build a prezi just 10 minutes before a meeting: search for a prezi in the Reuse Library, save a copy to your own account, and replace the content.


3. Don't end the loop: offer your version for further reuse! The result will be a growing database of diverse open knowledge.

New Learn Center

When building our new learn center, we had three goals in mind:

1. Collect all written and multimedia information on one page.


2. Offer step-by-step, detailed lessons for authors on different experience levels about how to use Prezi. Video and prezi introductions, guides, walkthroughs, and how-tos now live in the Prezi Academy.


3. You provide great feedback on our community forums, and we are happy to take this to the next level. Live From Prezi Universe is a new, dynamic section to share tips and tricks, read inspirational Prezi experiences, and get advice from professionals.

You can also check the updated Manual for further guidance. If you can't find an answer to your questions anywhere in the Learn Center, visit our community forums for personal support!

Server Upgrade This Sunday

Update: server upgrade finished.

Update: Hello Prezi People,

Server upgrade has begun on schedule. New stuff now loading through the pipes. Check back in 2 hours for more. We'll update you on the process.



Dear Pezi Authors,

We’ll have to unplug Prezi.com this Sunday morning from 10-12 AM CET (08:00-10:00 UTC), due to upgrades. The goal of the process is to prepare our system for some major new stuff.

During the process, our online services will be unavailable. This means:

1. You won’t be able to reach Prezi.com, the online editor,
2. You can’t login or reach your online Prezis from PreziDesktop (offline editor available for Pro users).
3. You can still edit, and export presentations with PreziDesktop in offline mode (since the software is not necessarily connected to the internet).
4. Of course you can even show your Prezis during downtime, if you have previously downloaded them to your computer.

We will try to make this as painless as possible. Our most effective weapon to achieve this goal is transparency and support.

For this reason, we welcome your comments on @prezisupport on Twitter while our data center is offline. Once the upgrade has finished, we will notify you immediately on the blog and on Twitter as well.