[iDC] Mosaic -> Prezi

[Drew Banks]

Hello,
I'm Drew Banks, Head of Marketing at Prezi, and I am co-leading (with Prezi
co-founder Adam Somlai-Fischer) the Thinking Prezi workshop on October 11 @
Mobility Shifts. I've a few online bios, notably
here<http://prezi.com/about/#banks>
 and here <http://www.drewbanks.com/>, which more or less correspond with
one another.  What's not explicit in these bios is the thread of my
experience that is most applicable to Mobility Shifts: the use of
Internet-based visualization technologies to integrate fragmented media and
enable dynamic, locationally independent communication and learning.

At SGI, one of my job titles was Director of Worldwide Communications and
Integrated Performance Support. It's a mouthful, I know, but one interesting
aspect of this title--other than its length--is the combination of
communications and learning functions (Integrated Performance Support
involved the development and dissemination curricula to support the
development of SGI's 15,000+ employee base). In most companies these two
functions are separate, so this merging of them was in and of itself
telling. I took this title seriously and searched for a medium that would
enable the integration of the two. This was '93/'94 and Mosaic had just
recently been released. Having been on Usenet for years, the potential of
Internet browsing was so obvious to me that it feels strange to call what I
felt an *aha* moment. But, in retrospect, *aha* is far too trivial a
sentiment.

At the time, few companies were allowing internal use of this new Internet
browsing technology, and even fewer had developed intranets. Fewer still had
developed a corporate intranet portal, or if they had, it consisted of a
simple, alphabetized list of links. I pulled together a cross-functional
team and built Silicon Junction, a corporate communication/education
platform that became an archetype on which many companies modeled their
intranet portals. The media attention Silicon Junction received surprised me
(remember, I thought the concept was obvious), and I traveled to conferences
around the globe speaking on how to use intranet technology to align and
educate your employee base. This experience led to my first book, *Beyond
Spin.*

When I was introduced to Prezi almost a year ago, I felt a sense of *d**éjà
vu* reminiscent of my Mosaic *aha*.  Prezi's zoomable, open canvas is an
ideal medium for both communication and learning. Because Prezi bridges the
non-linearity of ideation and the linearity of story telling, you don't have
to interrupt the creative process. You no longer need to brainstorm in one
tool and transfer your ideas to another tool to develop your presentation of
lesson. It is no surprise that Prezi has been rapidly adopted within
education.  What is surprising is the breadth of this adoption: K through
University. The below two examples demonstrate this breadth:

   - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK6gbn9Bx80
   - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5kAOE3x1aY

Need I say more?

-- 


*Drew Banks, *Head of Marketing,* Prezi.com*
857 Montgomery St., 3rd Fl., SF, CA 94133

Prezi is hiring! <http://prezi.com/jobs>
 [image: Facebook] <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Prezi/52193296770> [image:
LinkedIn] <http://www.linkedin.com/company/prezi> [image:
Twitter]<http://twitter.com/prezi>
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