Must have:
1. Nice motions/transitions (rules out Pitch who have been taking forever to implement it)
2. Embed videos
3. Must be really easy/fun to use
Apart from this, do you use any specific software to animate code blocks? I really like the Cypress documentation videos where certain parts of the code blocks are highlighted, with rest dimmed out, while explaining specific functions/methods (An example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1rHmOYyGDo).
Any tools that you use to make your presentations stand out can also be included.
P.S. I am really averse to Powerpoint. Haven't explored Keynote enough except for some basic presentations. Is Keynote good enough? Please let me know.
P.S.S. Prefer indie tools which I can support (if they are good enough). If you have developed one please don't hesitate to link here.
Thanks!
These days if I want to show you code, I'll open up my IDE and show it to you, right there in my code window. I don't really understand why this is different from screenshotting the code and putting it in a slide, but it is. The audience feels differently about code in your IDE. They ask more questions about it, and you can explore other parts of the code than what is on screen. If I want to show what the code does, I'll open the app or website and show it in its "live" context. A demo is more interesting than a set of screenshots, even if the content itself is identical.
And as for diagrams and title slides and things, I like to draw them by hand on my ipad. Sometimes I do that live, and sometimes I prepare a bunch of drawings beforehand and flip through them. (But while I'm presenting I'll often add more lines while I explain something). I use GoodNotes for ipad for that. People get really engaged by hand drawn slides, and I always get good feedback on them. I think novelty is the only reason. Everyone is bored to death of Powerpoint and hand drawn stuff catches the eye.
If you want your presentations to look like everyone else's, then sure - use keynote or whatever. But if you want your presentations to be interesting and engaging, don't go where everyone else is going. Find another way to tell your story.
No software in the world will make your presentation interesting if you don't know how to make a good presentation. A good place to start, IMHO, are the "Death by Powerpoint" guidelines [1].
As for the software itself: I use LibreOffice and that's fine - if it can generate presentations that would allow Steve Jobs to introduce the iPhone [2], it is good enough for me. I've also used Powerpoint and Keynote, and other than Keynote having slightly prettier defaults I couldn't give a strong reason for choosing one over the other.
I would encourage you to be very careful with animations - you don't want your audience to lose focus because you took them on a Hollywood-like trip across the universe every three minutes (looking at you, Prezi). I think your slides should be there only to show content that you cannot explain with words alone - if I can read everything I need from your slides, then why are you here?
Note: you would be surprised at the fierce oposition in big companies against slides that contain anything less than the content of the entire presentation. Always know your audience beforehand!
[1] https://www.slideshare.net/thecroaker/death-by-powerpoint
It's 20 year old, therefore completely timeless advice.
That said, to your actual questions I have done great presentations using Powerpoint but generally those are rare. I don’t think that Keynote is substantially different tbh so just pick what you have. I haveused them both and they seem much of a muchness. Googles presentation thing is kind of terrible because it just makes it really hard to keep a consistent set of fonts and sizes. I find it constantly just deciding to make text really small for no reason if I cut and paste.
I once had to do a round of multiple deep-dives into a complex model to a mathematical/quantitative audience. For that I used jupyter notebooks and reveal.js. This was great because if I had to field questions I could just jump straight to code, make changes, rerun and show the effect. It also meant showing beautiful code as well as equations just worked and didn’t require the sort of hideous messing around that say Powerpoint would.
I’ve used reveal-md often for internal talks and it’s been very effective with very little effort put into slide appearance - Just one css file to tweak and then write everything in markdown. https://github.com/webpro/reveal-md . It has a nice system for altering the slide ordering (you can go up/down as well as left/right) so it’s good for taking quick detours or going in-depth about a topic if you want to.
I have been developing it since 2009 and I think it has become a nice and fun tool to use, but not always easy.
From the "About" section (http://sozi.guide/en/about-sozi.html):
Sozi is a piece of software for creating animated presentations. It is generally used to make visual aids for lectures or meetings. With Sozi, a presentation is not organized as a sequence of slides, but rather as a succession of viewpoints on a map that you explore. Sozi is quite versatile. Some creators have already used it for other purposes, for example to make animated infographics, websites, or interactive fiction.
I think people have been so desensitised by all the "beautiful" presentations that when you put on something contrasting that, people can't help to pay more attention.
Obviously doesn't work in all contexts, like if you represent a enterprise and doing a presentation for a client. But if you try it in internal presentations, I'm sure you'll be surprised by the good reactions to it.
% Habits
% John Doe
% March 22, 2005
# In the morning
## Getting up
- Turn off alarm - Get out of bed
## Breakfast
- Eat eggs - Drink coffee
# In the evening
## Dinner
- Eat spaghetti - Drink wine
------------------
## Going to sleep
- Get in bed - Count sheep
---
One nice bonus of using plain text for my slideshows is that if I need to translate them (I teach in different languages) it's as easy as putting it through google translate or some similar service, and you get your translated presentation at the other end.
Why is this a must have?
The key problem, I would think, is: what are some great ways to help the audience get engaged with your presentation? The particulars of motions or visual transitions are only one way to hope to achieve engagement -- and an approach with very limited success.
Are you familiar with the XY Problem? [1]
When for some reasons I have to provide slides to others I'll simply export them to LaTeX/beamer sharing the resulting pdf.
Since I only write Markdown, I can focus on the content of my presentation. I don't need to make micro-decisions about the layout all the time.
It also allows you to easily add code highlighting with the features you require.
It does NOT support fancy transitions or motions, though.
You can use Ctrl+Tab (Shift+Ctrl+Tab) to cycle between the "slides". You can store the whole presentation in a dedicated bookmarks folder. Then, use "Open all in a new window" from the context menu of the bookmarks folder to run your presentation.
Maybe in a business-oriented setting that would be labelled as "lazy", but for me it feels bold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamer_(LaTeX)
It's simply amazing not to think about layouts anymore. I write what comes to my mind, include figures like I'd do with every other document and get a sleek presentation in minutes.
`present` mostly does the job & one can also give a live code-example (Golang) while in the presentation. As per the requirements mentioned above, it does not do 1.
I know nothing about your situation but are you sure glitzy slides are the best medium to communicate with your prospective customers?
[1]: https://ludus.one/
Same problem with Keynote - Mac-only, hard to convert to PDF if you don't have Mac, or you don't want to send a private deck to a conversion service.
Then briefly I used Prezi for public stuff.
I used reveal.js for teaching course with lots of code snippets. There are many similar markdown or other text-based presentation frameworks, some come with associated services, if you don't want to host them by yourself.
Now I use mostly Google Slides - it's the most portable solution (even mobile and iPad). It doesn't work offline, but I make sure to have a builtin 4G modem in my laptop and iPad. For the important presentations I always export slides as a PDF for backup.
For good looking slides with minimal effort: beautiful.ai
On their site they have a comparison to other solutions:
PowerPoint
Google Slides
Keynote
Prezi
Slidebean
VismePowerpoint's UI is not as intuitive but mostly it's because it's sluggish if you want to iterate fast.