No more death by Powerpoint

So, we had the first ever Going Social event at Kaizo yesterday – a breakfast seminar designed as a sort of ’social media 101′ for those who are looking to learn their Digg from their Delicious.

Now, it might not sound big to you, but a presentation in front of 50+ people (all bigwigs from major brands I might add) was a pretty big thing for me – but luckily it all went off without a hitch, and the presentation was really helped by two cool little web 2.0 tools, namely Animoto and Prezi.

Firstly, I used Animoto to create some punchy little vids to drop in – much more interesting than bullet points or screen grabs. Here’s one of them, created to talk about how brands are using Facebook:

Secondly – and probably most impressive in terms of impact – was Prezi. You might not have heard of it, but it’s a new online presentation tool (currently free!) that doesn’t use slides and provides an antidote to death by Powerpoint. Weird? Yes. Cool? Definitely. Click here to see the presentation. I was going to embed it in the post with an iFrame but decided it’s better in its full screen glory.

It might not make much sense without me and Neil Hallmark presenting it, but you can have a play and see what Prezi is made of. Although the best thing to do is probably just have a crack yourself and play around. Below is a quick vid that gives you a nice insight into some of Prezi’s tricks (although I have no idea what the native language of the narrator is – it’s definitely not English!)

And it’s not just Prezi that’s finally killing the beast of Powerpoint. Slide Rocket is probably the most famous online presentation tool at the moment and loads more can be found at Go2Web2 where I find loads of gems.