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Keynote ruckus at HighEdWeb (sleary) – [Technology is completely dependable only in that it's sure to find new ways to punish the unprepared.] "What do 450 web nerds do when they’re trapped in a hotel ballroom listening to someone who’s insulting their intelligence? They get out their laptops and smartphones and start tweeting." Do this before using PowerPoint seriously (PPTools) – "Before you get serious with PowerPoint, do yourself a BIG favor and change a few settings. Leaving them at their defaults can cause you to lose data or even your whole PowerPoint presentation." TRAIN WRECK (Life in Biscuit) – "I was doing great, chatting it up with the other members of the scholarship committee, planning our strategy and then while on stage waiting to present, I was still feeling fine… riiiight up until I reached the podium. I think I blacked out. My body started to sweat, I had rivers of sweat running down my back, I thought to myself.. no I'm not going to pass out… I'm going to THROW UP. THEN? THEN? my voice revolted against my brain and started shaking so hard, it sounded like I was going to cry." The Oops Factor (Two Well Read) – “It is a fact if you perform live, sooner or later you will meet with a genuine, bona fide onstage disaster. Generally, these seem to fall into two categories. The first is the self-made conflagration where lyrics evaporate into thin air, the high note that was there at sound check mysteriously vanishes in performance, clothing falls apart, and stools move themselves about the stage so that you find yourself in a heap on the floor. I could go on, but being the superstitious type I’ll stop here. The second is the stuff performance legends are made of, those moments where, despite your diligent rehearsal and careful plotting of every moment, elements beyond your control enter in and all hell breaks loose. Sometimes it comes from your fellow musicians onstage, sometimes from the tech booth, and sometimes from that ever unpredictable element, the audience.” [Great stories in the post as well as in the comments. Artistic presentations oops are as much fun business presentation disasters.] The ten worst presentation moments (Microsoft) – [Posted back in 2006, it's become a classic.] "In the late 1990s I was asked to give a presentation to a group of people from a Government Agency. I didn’t want to carry all of my presentation equipment, so I asked for a projector and PowerPoint to be provided. I then turned up ready to give the presentation with my presentation on a floppy disk. In the meeting room was a 35mm slide projector. The meeting organiser pointed to the corner and said in a somewhat insulted tone,'There is the power point; we do have electricity here – we are not that backward.'” Equipment Photos (Great Public Speaking) – [Fantastic idea for when you're presenting overseas, wish I had thought of it.] "When I arrived as the opening speaker (after having confirmed three times an overhead projector and screen), none was to be found in the room. The manager of the gigantic ballroom could not speak English and because of tight scheduling of other events, I was not able to be in the room early as I always am. I forgot to bring my equipment photographs which would have gotten the point across to the manager immediately whether he spoke English or not. It really didn't matter though, because the projector he finally brought was so terrible I had to scrap all the overheads." If You Only Listen to One PowerPoint Tip…(Overnight Sensation) – “I did this once but had the good sense to save my file in an older file format just in case. When it loaded up, I was all excited – until I noticed that the system lacked the font I used and defaulted to different font. Normally, a different font isn’t a big deal but in my case the new font was spaced differently which caused 75% of my slides to have text falling off the screen. I was lucky that I also saved it in Adobe PDF format which preserved my fonts. Of course, even with some work my presentation didn’t fill the screen, lost its transition effects and I essentially scrolled page by page through the document. But at least the audience was able to get the full benefit of the presentation.” Jackman – Can You Hear Us Now? (TMZ.com) – “Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig were trying to perform their play “A Steady Rain” Wednesday night in NYC — but some nitwit forgot to turn off his mobile phone. Jackman set the dude straight — staying in character all the while. Minutes later, the ring tone echoed through the theater again and Craig’s response was Tony-worthy. Neither actor seemed shaken or stirred.” [Great example of keeping focused. It’s much harder to stay on track like that in smaller venues, say a conference room.] 10 Things I taught my interns (The Hopkinson Report) – “If you’re doing a presentation, something will go wrong. … Even with modern advances, getting everything to work right is still very difficult. Every laptop has a different set of key commands to change from the laptop screen to the overhead monitor. There’s never the right dongle to connect to a projector. The speakers are always too loud or non-existent. The internet connection doesn’t work or is too slow. I once did a presentation in front of 250 people involving a laptop hooked to a miniature camera on a tripod that was focusing on the beta version of live features on a prototype cell phone being held in vice grips. I was there an hour ahead of time, and checked everything over 5 times, and believe it or not, I was good to go. That was, of course, until 5 minutes before I went on, when the setup went dead. The unknown cause? The lamp on the projector overheated. … How can you overcome a nightmare presentation? Preparation and alternatives.” [Follows up with good suggestions] |
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