Editor’s note:

The foundation of every great presentation is a compelling story. You can simply pile a bunch of images onto the canvas and zoom around them, but thinking cinematically means thoughtful use of camera moves and a focus on the emotional impact of each scene.  Beautiful images and stunning animations alone can grab an audience's attention, but it's the story that will inspire them to take action or reduce them to tears.

What makes a great presentation? Is it the content, or the way it's packaged?

For most, it's getting the right combination. The medium you choose should be tailored to the intended level of interaction and desired response from the audience. Sharing a story with entrepreneurs at a conference versus presenting data to a small team of engineers are two scenarios that require different types of presentations. The first would benefit from using spatial relationships to tell his story, and the latter might prefer something that's more of a simple information display. Choosing the right method to share ideas starts with knowing the audience.

You know what's fun? When you show your class a Prezi and kids say, 'I wanna learn how to do that.'

— Michael S Weller (@MWeller77) May 2, 2013

Editor's note: Ken Walker is a lead on the Eclipse Orion project, a browser-based open tool integration platform that is entirely focused on developing for the web, in the web. He's also one of the extraordinary speakers who were talking at MLOC.JS international JavaScript conference, the first event in the row of tech conferences, held earlier this year.

When Péter Halácsy asked me to speak about the Orion Project at MLOC.JS, I was both excited and a bit overwhelmed. The other speakers and their topics looked so impressive that I was really glad just to have my name on the same list.

Every time someone creates a new prezi, we want them to see the best of our product—our latest features, the most intuitive interface, the easiest new ways to collaborate. But today, we want to share an artifact with you, something from our past. On the occasion of Prezi’s 4th birthday, we’re looking back over our company history and we’ve decided to show you the earliest versions of a tool that’s since been adopted by millions of people all around the world and has changed how we share ideas. These were created back in the early 2000s when Prezi was just the seed of an idea.

Before the launch of Prezi in April 2009, we were just a few ambitious and naive young professionals sharing an office with an architecture studio, working on something called ZUI (Zooming User Interface). This rudimentary prototype has developed into software with practical applications for millions of real people, and the team that now refines it numbers more than a hundred. From our early architecture roots, we’ve grown into a global company that continues to help people make their ideas beautiful.

We first envisaged Prezi on large-scale screens at conferences. Everything that has happened since our early pitches for funding has come so fast that it’s amusing to now see prezis on tiny mobile displays, let alone at TED conferences, and even in political advertising campaigns.

Join us in celebrating Prezi’s 4th birthday, enjoy these tidbits from our past, and stay tuned for the future.

There are a number of tools at our disposal. Like most data-driven companies out there, we have dashboards, advanced analytics, usage logs, and reams of billing data. We spend our days (and nights) looking at charts, comparing tables, and tilting our heads to read Y axes. The information we collect is used for making strategic decisions, measuring the impact of design changes, evaluating our support, and setting targets. The qualitative analysis at Prezi is top-notch. And I think we do a good job using that data to help people better share their ideas.

It’s all very rewarding and worthwhile -- don't get me wrong -- but decimal numbers, curved lines, and mean deviations are all rather impersonal ways of gauging how people truly feel about a tool that’s supposed to help the spread of ideas.

Like what you see below? We added a little incentive for them: our Ambassador with the most viewed prezi wins an iPad mini, so “vote” for your favorite by sharing it with your friends and family. "Voting" closes at Noon, Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013.

Harsh Banwait, of Stony Brook University offers some advice on getting through the chicanery of April Fool’s:

Europe has an amazing history. It was the birthplace of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. But along the way, it has also played host to the ugly side of humanity. Two world wars and numerous attempts at global colonization all started in Europe. These experiences have left the continent cynical—and duly so. How do we know if the next brave dream will take us to new heights or plunge us into somewhere altogether darker?