Two of the most memorable events that I have recently attended were Inbound 2014 and Social Media Marketing World 2015. What made them so memorable?
Sure, they had world class speakers, Inbound featured Dharmesh Shah and Rand Fishkin while Social Media Marketing World featured Guy Kawasaki, and Michael Stelzner. They were both set in fantastic cities-Boston and San Diego and both events had world class networking activities.
Generally, making friends is a lot easier if you’re listening to Janelle Monae (Inbound) or playing marketing bingo on a historic aircraft carrier (SMMW), but really what made both events so memorable was the quality of the conference presentations.
Here’s the thing: neither the venue, nor the celebrity cache of your speakers matters if your attendees feel like they aren’t getting value from attending your event. If you promise them world class talks that will help them improve their business, then you better deliver.
To deliver value to your attendees, each speaker will need a killer presentation and to help all of you event organizers out there, we’ve put together a list of fantastic conference presentation tools worth sharing with your speakers.
Presentation Tools To
Maximize Your Wow Factor
1. Prezi
Prezi offers the opportunity to get rid of normal slides à la PowerPoint and start using a cool, flowing, non-linear conference presentation tool. This is a highly visual program that has a customizable zooming lens. It allows event presenters to hone in on certain aspects of a presentation for emphasis. The best thing about Prezi is that it is cloud-based, so users can access it from anywhere.
2. Keynote
Keynote is a great app for Apple products that works with iCloud. It has easy drag and drop capabilities, interactive charts, and impressive visual tools. Keynote is great for conference presentations because it helps users stay on schedule with a built in timer. It also provides users with the ability to preview the upcoming slide before it goes on the big screen.
3. Haiku Deck
This is an app for mobile devices that aims at making presentation creation more fun. It has multiple apps and an in-house graph maker, plus the ability to bring in media from Dropbox, Facebook and more! Another great feature of Haiku Deck is that it gives users access to millions of images from Getty Images and Creative Commons. Eventprofs will barely have to leave the presentation platform to make something great!
4. Canva
At Bizzabo, we’re big proponents of Canva. From creating beautiful blog post headers, to building unique presentations - we use Canva and thoroughly recommend it. Canva has a dedicated presentation builder that is filled with simple ways to create a visually stunning conference presentation. Additional presentation tools include free and for-purchase stock images, and simple but effective cloud hosting.
5. Google Slides
If you haven’t tried Google Slides, go try it after you finish reading this article. Google slides works similarly to Keynote and good ‘ole Microsoft PowerPoint, but it allows for cross-device collaboration and seamlessly integrates into Google’s Cloud saving platform, called Drive.
6. Slides
Slides works similarly to Canva and Google Slides, but provides users with deeper features. This conference presentation tool might be easier for users who are used to Powerpoint, or who are looking for easy to use, yet detailed customization options.
7. Visme
This isn’t just a conference presentation tool, Visme can build all sorts of custom presentations, reports and sales decks. What makes it great is that it stores your work in one secure place, allows users to easily edit graphs and infographics, and has a wide array of share options.
8. Lintelus
Audience engagement is key if you want event attendees to truly pay attention to a conference presentation, and that’s where Lintelus comes in. With an array of features like Q&A messaging, live polling, slide sharing and more, Lintelus allows event attendees to interact with a conference speaker by contributing to the conversation through their multi-screen presentation enhancements.
9. Duuzra
Rather than presenting to an audience on one giant screen, why not push your presentation to the devices your audience is holding in their hands? Duuzra allows conference presenters to create interactive presentations, while providing data on how users engaged with the presentation. Duuzra allows presenters to engage event attendees in a novel way, while also collecting in-depth data about those attendees.
10. Zoho
Like other cloud-based presentation systems, Zoho allows users to create inspiring presentations. Users can import different file types including Powerpoint slides, Tweets, and videos. Zoho preserves presentation formatting across files, so that each slide and each presentation looks uniform and professional. When conference presenters are ready to educate their audience, Zoho can push presentation files to nearly any device.
11. Bunkr
Like Zoho, Bunkr allows users to easily build beautiful slide presentations using a sleek cloud-based platform. Bunkr is perfect for conference organizers who want a flexible platform with all of the necessary templates, customization options and integrations to make a presentation that feels truly professional. Unlike some of the other platforms, Bunkr has pre-made templates depending on your goal.
12. Slidebean
You can spend hours building a beautiful event presentation deck, or you can let Slidebean create a beautiful deck for you in minutes. Simply type out the content of your slides, and Slidebean will take your words and format them into great looking slides. What could be better for busy event presenters?
13. Sway - Coming Soon
Sway combines Evernote and Microsoft Powerpoint to create a new presentation creation experience. With in-platform search, users can surf the web for relevant content without leaving the Sway platform. Easy drag and drop editing makes creating a visually appealing presentation painless. Plus, Sway comes equipped with a number of share options to make sharing a conference presentation with attendees a breeze.
14. Emaze
Emaze has professional templates to choose from to create an amazing visual experience for your attendees. It’ll help you create a slide show, video presentation or a 3D presentation! This is perfect for those #eventprofs who really want to have a strong visual aspect for their conference presentation.
15. Projeqt
This platform aims to bring presentations to life. You can upload a pre-existing presentation or create a new one within Projeqt. Easy-to-use features, integrated live tweets, blog feeds, interactive maps and video streaming allow speakers to create slides that are always up-to-date. The program also lets users embed presentations, a perfect feature for showcasing a presentation on an event website.
16. PowToon
Having something unique and cool in your conference presentations is a key element to grabbing attention of attendees. PowToon is perfect for that- its easy-to-animate software allows you to create custom animations to put into your presentation. This will make your presentation more exciting to look at and help conference speakers convey their message more clearly.
17. Adobe Voice
Adobe Voice is an app that lets conference presenters create interesting and unique videos through narration. Simply record your narration and when you’re done recording, Adobe Voice lets you pick from thousands of images to enhance your story. Viewable on any device, this conference presentation tool is perfect for making a presentation really stand out with a personal touch.
18. Empressr
Designed to allow users to easily embed video and audio within a presentation, Empressr is a simple tool with straightforward controls perfect for speakers looking to add video to a completed presentation.
19. Oomfo
Wow your audience with data! Maybe that sentence sounds like an oxymoron to you, but with Oomfo it’s actually possible to create visually compelling graphs and charts. Create interactive pie charts, graphs that instantly pull data from Excel spreadsheets and more. This is a fantastic tool for a speaker or event planner interested in presenting data in a new, exciting way.
20. Knovio
After a conference has concluded, speakers can turn their presentations into something more exciting than a Slideshare presentation with Knovio. Upload a Powerpoint presentation, add audio or video to the file and share it with Knovio’s integrations. In no time, a speaker can turn a text-based presentation into something that will have true value online.
21. Present.me
Like Knovio, Present.me allows users to quickly add video or audio to a document or presentation. Unlike Knovio, Present.me supports more than Powerpoint presentations. It’s another creative way for conference speakers to repurpose their presentations using a simple yet powerful tool.
22. Reflector 2
Remember this app when you’re about to present on the Y Combinator stage, or at your local demo day. Reflector 2 allows users to mirror the screen of a cell phone on a much larger screen. So if a conference speaker wants to show thousands of users what using a certain app is like, all they have to do is download the Reflector 2 app and present. It’s an elegant app perfect for events.
23. Timeglider
While it’s not a conference presentation tool per se, Timeglider allows users to create timelines that can easily be inserted into a conference presentation. This would be a great tool for presenters who want to show the development of a company, project or app.
24. SlideShare
This tool is perfect for those #eventprofs who are trying to share their conference presentations publicly. This free conference presentation tool already has an active existing audience, which means you can get your content out there for people to share and embed on their blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and more! It has a vast number of presentations for you to browse through for inspiration, too. Plus, it has a built-in commenting system in case viewers want to share their opinion of a presentation.
25. SlideDog
SlideDog is great for live sharing and audience engagement through mobile devices and laptops. It also allows users to combine PowerPoints, Prezis, video clips, and web pages for a seamless attendee experience.
26. Preseria
When your event or conference is days away, you’ll come to appreciate Preseria. It allows conference organizers to invite event speakers and have them upload their presentations all in one place. The conference presentation software has two parts: a web application to gather all parts of the presentation and a slide viewer. We are big fans of all-in-one event platforms, and Preseria provides organizers with a great all-in-one presentation platform that organizers will love because it’s simple to use while keeping things organized.
27. Join.me
Join Me is designed to make meetings better, but it can also be used for small conferences or meet-ups. With Join Me, users can easily speak to one another through a supported conference call. The presenter can upload a presentation to his or her Join Me account while conferencing or video conferencing with attendees. This tool is great for those interested in virtual conferencing.
28. Slide Source
This conference presentation tool is more for event organizers, rather than event speakers, but it’s valuable nonetheless. Slide Source helps users easily manage multiple presentations in one place. In addition, the platform allows users to create new unique presentations by using existing uploaded slides in new ways.
29. Authorstream
An alternative to Slideshare, Author Stream allows event organizers and event presenters the ability to easily share a presentation online. Unlike Slideshare, Author Stream has a number of great presentation templates visitors can download to ensure that their conference presentation will look awesome, and will be easy to share.
30. SlideBoom
This allows users to share a conference presentation publicly for free, or with a private audience for $195 per year. This solution would be ideal for larger event organizers who want a way to share presentations with attendees during or after an event.
Now that you’ve found some resources to help create and manage conference presentations, it’s time to learn how to properly market all of those great speakers who will be at your event. Learn how to use social media to marketing your event with our Complete Guide To Event Hashtags. Click the button below to get a free copy!
