Great Public Speaking: Tough Venues — “Did you ever present in a barn? How about a bowling alley? How about a community center where drum lessons are being given in the next room? Well I’ve been in all those situations and more and so far I’ve survived the recurring nightmares and waking up in a cold sweat just thinking about them. I’ve been diagnosed with PTVD — Post-Traumatic Venue Disorder.”
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Web Worker Daily: Laptops and Water Do Not Mix: A Cautionary Tale — “This past weekend, I was on the web and doing some writing on my beloved Lenovo ThinkPad X40 sub-notebook, when disaster struck.”
The AV Report: Plan B, from Earth (back-up planning in action) — “I believe in a solid AV set-up, with all details considered, so that audiovisual presentations (slide shows, audio, video, multimedia, special film screenings, etc) play back in as flawless a manner as possible. However, being an earthling from Earth, I know the gods can be crazy from time to time.”
Jackie Cameron: Memories of a really bad speaking experience — “A couple of weeks later I received a tape of the session – and the audience feedback. I listened to the tape and cringed.”
Presentation Skills: Presentation Stories — “When I agreed to give a presentation to 26 soldiers from the former Yugoslavia about the Tribunal, I had no idea so many things could go wrong in a 25 minute presentation.”
The Experience is the Product: 5 sentences that send your audience lunging for their Blackberries/iPhones — “’OK, hang on a second, having some technical difficulties…’ Projectors are not known for their usability. That said, there aren’t too many variables: a couple types of cables, a couple settings, a few places to look for projection/monitor settings on your laptop. I learned them. If you’d rather waste my time than learn them yourself, I’m a lot less inclined to listen to you.”
The PowerPoint® Blog: Before Ungrouping Chart – Make a Hidden Backup — “For many projects I find myself ungrouping charts for custom animations or any number of other reasons. But what often happens is a need to adjust the chart… oops that chart is now 50+ individual text boxes and autoshapes.”
Make Your Point with Pow’R: Innovative time tips when you don’t have a designated timer — “Do you lose track of time when you are presenting? Every presenter is subject to going overtime and getting off schedule. Going over time is an occupational hazard of public speaking, but you have no excuse for going over time.”
Indezine: Version Hell: PowerPoint 2007 Shadow Problems — “If your presentation uses the Formatting toolbar to add shadows to text, you’ll find that it shows fine when played in PowerPoint 2007. However, any shadows that you add through the Drawing toolbar in PowerPoint 2003 or earlier end up looking horrible in PowerPoint 2007 — this works out more worse when the text is animated — in that case the text animates, but the shadow doesn’t!”
RULESofTHUMB.org: ASSURING SUCCESS — “To succeed against all possible odds, count on at least 1 in 4 things going wrong. In other words, you need a 33 percent margin of safety. If you have to have 30 of something, plan to make 40.”