Let's talk about presentation tools

The status-quo #

You bet? Try to ask “I need to build a presentation” and you’ll get these hints:

• Powerpoint
• Apple Keynote
• Google Presentation
• maybe the new kid Slides.com or Canva

That’s understandable. Powerpoint came out 30 years ago. Keynote and GPresentation just improved the Powerpoint legacy, by adding features, integration possibilities and better user interfaces.

It looks like there’s just one way to build digital presentations.

No matter the choice, they all belong to the same paradigm:

You have a canvas and you can do whatever you want on that canvas

And that’s a problem in most cases.

A new breed of presentation tools #

I’m working on a side-project, a little tool that helps to make effective presentations in an efficient way.

It’s still in progress, a lot of things are supposed to change, but there’s one principle I’m very close to that is guiding the whole design since the beginning:

Not a canvas, but a system with options and sensible defaults.

Not an easy task, though, but Presenta is in good company. And that’s awesome!

Pasteapp, Pitch, Swipe, Slidebean, Beautiful, Mentimeter, DeckSet (please tell me if I missed some others). [edit: Wow, there’s also a big fish that for some reason I missed: Sway from Microsoft] [edit 2: apparently internet is big, here another one: PitchDeck and Decktopus]

They are all different, each following a precise concept and paradigm.

They are all trying to change the current status-quo of the presentation tools.

Probably, no one is going to become the new standard, or maybe yes.

The important thing is that all of them will contribute to innovating in the field by pushing the limits in different directions.

Isn’t this great?