Legal Commentary

Beyond PowerPoint

By Stewart Baker

To my surprise, I?m kind of a PowerPoint fan.  I know slides can be deadly, and I?ve heard all the jokes about how power corrupts and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.  Even so, I cling to the view that, when done right, slides and pictures add a lot to a speech.  At least that?s my theory.  Others who?ve seen my talks may have a different view.

That said, PowerPoint holds few surprises for today?s audiences.  So I was tickled to discover ?Prezi? online today.  It?s a new way of presenting information, which uses a kind of swooping motion and endless nested layers of magnification to give visual order to a presentation.  I liked it enough to spend much of Sunday learning the system.  I also tried my hand at a ?prezi? substitute for the slides I use in the first ten minutes my usual talk about the themes of ?Skating on Stilts.?  (The service is free, at least for starters.)

The prezi I did was meant to accompany a talk, so it may be a little hard to follow unless you?ve read the first chapter of the book or heard the talk. Oh, and if you get seasick easily, you might want to take it slowly.

You can see the Prezi here:

Let me know what you think.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on October 03, 2010 (boomark / email).