Death to PowerPoint! This preso tool takes slides to sexier, more social heights

Are you ready to spice up your next speaking gig with something better than slides and less of a loose cannon than a Twitter wall?

Prezentarium is a new product just for those occasions. It combines the best parts of preso software (helping the audience follow along) with the best of interactive conference media (helping the audience stay engaged), all while avoiding the dull horror of most PowerPoint alternatives.

Slideshows get a bad rap in public speaking. And they should. They’re usually ugly and universally boring. Prezentarium brings something new to the table: a website and native mobile app that helps a public speaker deliver a great address will also allowing attendees or viewers to ask questions, and make comments along with the presentation.

The app also lets audience members communicate the content in and questions around the speaker’s address via their own social networks — and let’s face it, this already happens; it’s just too poorly organized for anyone to take immediate action on most of the time.

“As an avid presenter, I missed such a convenient tool to conduct the keynote,” said Prezentarium co-founder Vitaly Dubinin in an email chat with VentureBeat. “And more importantly, as a speaker, I need my presentation to go viral.” During his presentation at DEMO, Dubinin echoed the same point and promised that the best presentations would be aggressively shared. “This happens very easily and naturally,” he said. “All you have to do is deliver your keynote.”

Aside from public speaking use cases, Dubinin also sees Prezentarium as a great tool for educators. On stage at DEMO, the panel of sages, primarily venture capital investors, felt this aspect of the product was the strongest use-case. They viewed this as a potentially fundable ed-tech technology.

The company was founded in August 2012 and is currently presenting at DEMO, where Dubinin hopes to raise the eyebrows of a few Silicon Valley investors. Over the next few months, the team hopes to bring its product to all the mobile platforms and evolve the product based on user feedback.

Presentarium is one of more than 75 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2012 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After we make our selections, the chosen companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.