schulze and webb have done it again

I've always attributed most of the success I've had as a planner to the fact that I learned how to stick images in PowerPoint way before most other people. (Partly because I used to sit through three day product briefings from Microsoft people when I worked on the business).

So basically I've been coasting for the last ten years.

But always conscious of the need for career innovation I've kept looking for the next thing that's going to make me seem interesting again. I've played around with using a tablet a bit, used mindmapping sometimes, but they've not really done it. And it's always puzzled me that more technologists haven't spent time building and developing presentation tools, since there's so much obvious room for improvement. Powerpoint and Keynote seem to have stopped evolving. They're both fine, but they just do what they do.

Well, all hail Schulze and Webb because they're certainly thinking about it. And I love this new interface they've built for 2D presentations, because it changes the way you'd approach a presentation, and that needs doing. And the physicality of it is brilliant, it gets you well away from clicking, which is huge, because clicking instantly makes you feel like you're sitting at your desk not standing on a stage, and clicking normally requires looking at a mouse or something, which puts your attention in the wrong place. Brilliant. Wouldn't you love to play with that? See how it changes the way you present.

Personally I'm desperate for someone to build the next iteration of video in presentation software - I want to be able to use video as effectively as you can use images. So not just embedding a chunk that grinds away with you powerless to stop it, but something that lets you talk for as long as you want while your video loops away behind you and then, when you're ready, smoothly transitions into the next bit of video which then similarly vamps until ready.

I hope someone's working on that.

Comments

[mattw]

Russell, I think you're spot on with the comment about clicking and I think it goes beyond desk vs stage. It's that clicking implies that you've already pre-ordained the direction of your argument and now you're just tapping through it.

Now, good presenters will know how to adapt to their audience with their words, but why aren't the slides less clicky and more exploratory? That's what the 2D Slideshow could do: turn the presentation into a conversational guided tour. (Shouldn't all creative software have a presentation model built-in, given how much collaboration we do?)

And thanks for the comments! Incidentally, I'm always on the lookout for companies who want to research these kind of topics, so if you run across that company building the next-gen presentation software then please do let me know :)

[Rob Mortimer]

I think flash is an under utilised presentation tool, it can do a lot more than powerpoint with much more variety. Including better video control for one thing.

Once voice recognition improves I think we will see presentations that track the voice of the speaker and change on certain words or phrases.

Looking at the gyroscopic control of the Nintendo Wii also suggests that there is room for airbound wireless control in the very close future.