Presentations 2.0

Power-point used to be the gold standard for presentations. Not anymore.

Improving the visual appearance of slides, reducing the amount of text and increasing the number of pictures is not enough. Recent development in mapping software now allow anyone to create presentations that are actually maps and not a sequence of slides. Advantages are obvious (although not necessarily easy to implement): you can easily offer overview and zoom, show how things relate to each other and keep the “big picture”.

I already blogged about Prezi, which is making impressive improvements in every new release. More options are available, exploiting the same mapping principle.

Ahead is a web based mapping tool, similar to Prezi but with a few more options. Same principle: the basic version is free and your maps are public. If you want more options there’s a monthly subscription. Even their websites is made with Ahead!

Timetoast is an interactive tool for creating timelines and roadmaps. As they say in the tag-line “to share the past, or even the future”.

Thank you Rahel for the hints!