Using Social Media to Talk about Social Media at the Grantmakers in the Arts Pre-conference
This afternoon I had the opportunity to speak to around 70 program officers from a wide variety of foundations at the Grantmakers in the Arts pre-conference entitled "New Media and the Arts: A Force for Change." I had fifteen minutes to present on the "new tools" panel, using GK's own work as case studies.
Most would choose one or two and go deep. But if you know me, no way. I took on gaming, virtual worlds AND social media - how can I help it? - giving examples from each.
The presentation is below:
The presentation above was created in Prezi, a new presentation program that, like Keynote, improves upon Powerpoint but in reality is a real game changer. I like to compare Powerpoint and Keynote by saying, "You have to work hard to make something look good in Powerpoint. In Keynote, you have to work hard to make it look bad." In reality, both are the same concept - presentations are mostly text, with some images and videos, and snazzy animations - presented as slides, one order after another.
Prezi is something else entirely. There are no slides in Prezi. No linear narrative of one box with bulleted-text after another. Rather, imagine drawing out your ENTIRE presentation on one unbounded sheet of paper, and then controlling how the camera moves around it. Now imagine that you are not only moving back and forth on the X axix and up and down on the Y axis, but also forward and back on the Z axis. That's right - you can put your entire presentation within the dot on the "i" in your title. The camera tilts as well as it moves from one section of the presentation to another.
As a result, you end up with something heavy on images rather than text, forcing you to actually say what you want to say rather than read it off the slide, and provides the viewer with a very dynamic (too dynamic and it will make people nauseous!) experience.
But Prezi is even more than just that. It is social media itself. While you can download your presentation and show it offline, it is free to use, created through their web site, and sharable (and editable) with others. Perfect social media. So today I was able to use social media as a vehicle for talking about social media.
Now, here's what I did NOT talk about today and why I want to be giving Prezi a big up right now. I finished the Prezi this past Friday. All worked well online. But when I downloaded it for offline viewing, it still played all four of the videos - but at the same time!
I immediately went to their support site and learned that I could post my concern to an open forum. Oh, whoopee! How many times had I done that to never get a response. But this time, that evening, the CTO of Prezi wrote back. He told me he would fix it the next day. In fact, he promised me it would be fixed by the presentation. He worked on it Saturday, then Sunday, until it worked. And it did. Thank you Prezi!
And thank you for offering another example of the true social behind social media.
UPDATE
Ian David Moss wrote a nice overview of the entire day. Below is the excerpt on my presentation:
I will tell you one thing: media people know how to put together a snazzy presentation. This observation was driven home to me in particular by Barry Joseph’s dizzying “prezi” for Global Kids, which can be downloaded here. Global Kids invests in several strategies for engaging youth in new media. First, it brings video games (and in particular, video game design) into the classroom using tools such as Scratch. Did you know that 99% of boys and 94% of girls play video games at this point? Second, Global Kids leverages virtual worlds such as Second Life to engage kids in activities like making short movies. Finally, the organization treats social media like a Boy Scouts activity, allowing youth to earn “badges” in areas such as “judgment,” “negotiation,” and “distributed cognition.” All in all, a fascinating presentation.
