Murphy's Law states: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." This is especially true and especially painful when there is an audience involved.
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You know the guy* I mean.
The guy who…
-
 ©iStockphoto.com/theprint insists on making multiple, tweaky, obviously non-essential slide changes minutes before going on (this behavior is very much akin to the way he treats waiters in order to provide evidence of his place in the pecking order).
- loses temper in an extremely unprofessional way when these unimportant, last minute, “emergency” changes weren’t done right and are projected during his presentation.
- loses temper in an extremely unprofessional way when something important gets screwed up because of unimportant, last minute, “emergency” changes (i.e., slides in wrong order, old slide not deleted).
- points out screw up caused by making unimportant, last minute, “emergency” changes to the entire audience and announces, “I don’t know what happened, I guess the AV guys messed up.”
- comes to the meeting with non-PC and/or non-PPT slides files without letting anyone know in advance.
- loves unusual, nonstandard fonts, but never bring the font files with him and always forgets where he found them.
- wanders off with the lavalier mic so the sound guy has to chase him down through the post-meeting crowd, out to the lobby (or in one case, outside to the limo), to retrieve it.
- shows up at the ballroom the night before the meeting for the final slide review, slightly drunk, very late and more interested in socializing with the other speakers than in rehearsing or finalizing his slides with the graphics tech.
[Disclaimer: the above traits either belong to someone described in a story told to me be a friend in the business or are composite descriptions derived from experiences I had a long time ago in a previous professional life.]
I’m sure everyone has their own list of behaviors particular to the version of That Guy they have most often been exposed to. I mentioned the topic of an earlier version of this post to Ellen Finkelstein and she sent along a few items sure to tick off any AV crew:
- Forget to tell them you’re using a Mac
- Forget to tell them that the presentation was created on a Mac, but you’re showing it on a PC, and you’ve never tried it out on your PC
- Forget to tell them that your presentation has a movie with sound
- Forget to tell them that in the middle of the presentation, you want to go to YouTube and show the audience a video, so you need a live Internet connection
- Forget to tell them that your going to ask for audience participation, so you need a couple of microphones in the audience area
- Forget to tell them that you like to walk around the audience while you speak, so you need a wireless lapel mic
- Forget to tell them that your laptop doesn’t reliably work with projectors because Dell stopped selling the model and doesn’t support it any more and you upgraded it to Windows Vista and so there’s no updated graphics driver (Yes, that’s me!)
It’s important to recognize that That Guy isn’t always a presenter, as blogger and AV tech “the urban cowboy” can testify:
i’ve worked as an AV tech for a good while now and it can be a long, hard, thankless slog. i’ve thought nothing of a 70 hour week, or a two-day rig that’s been changed at the last minute.
or a client turning up and knowing your job better than you do, even though it’s their first ever live event.
or making a speaker cable out of a 4-way because some idiot didn’t put enough in the cable trunk.
or getting the blame for a microphone not working, and it turns out someone in the audience has turned it off.
or rigging an event one day, turning up the next day to run it and finding one of the cleaners has stolen the projector.
…
or camera-men falling asleep.
or finding that a crew-member has plugged the entire video/graphics rig, satellite feed and the comms system into one 13-amp socket.
…. i could go on…
There are two reasons not to be That Guy.
First, That Guy tends to scatter a trail of presentation mishaps, difficulties and disasters behind them as they go from meeting to event to conference.
Second, That Guy is least likely to inspire the support team to go to heroic lengths to save the day when things go very, very badly.
 It’s a perfect example of instant karma. The person most likely to need help from others is also the person least likely to have predisposed those around him to offer more than the minimal amount of assistance necessary to keep the disaster from overtaking the entire project and everyone else involved.
Please don’t misunderstand what I’m getting at. I have yet to meet an AV professional who would screw up a meeting or a presentation on purpose. But I do know that there are people you will be dependent on, people you need to be proactive in preventing problems and who need to be performing to the best of their abilities when things go terrible wrong. Make sure you’re the guy who does everything possible to develop a good working relationship with these these folks.
* For some reason, in my mind’s eye, this sort of person is always a guy.
Your Turn:
What are some of the karma killing behaviors you noticed when you’ve been lucky enough to work with That Guy? Do you suspect you might be That Guy? Has you ever worked with That Gal? Please share your thoghts as a comment to this post.
Just as I was beginning to get a little tired of reading my own stories here on BML, reader Bedd Gelert left a comment on a previous post that was begging to be front page material (BTW, I’m fairly certain that “Bedd Gelert” is a pseudonym):
 Okay, technically this isn’t a ‘presentation’ disaster, but because it concerns a PC and a meeting where having it functioning was pretty well essential I will mention it…
I was pretty stressed, as I had to take details, onto a spreadsheet, of the issues on literally dozens of different items we were dealing with, on a Red / Amber / Green basis, with half a dozen people in the room and someone from IT, who had all this information, at the end of a phone line.
The computer wouldn’t work, as I couldn’t ‘sign in’ to it. I got more and more irate, as it kept rejecting my password. In the end I took to it to another room, got on the phone to PC Support and [there is no way I can shy away from this, and I’m not proud, but one has to tell the truth however ashamed I am … ] I went ballistic. ‘Why isn’t this pc working – I am about to go into a 2 hour meeting and I need this to be working NOW – Why isn’t it??’
Cue more weeping, wailing and a temper tantrum with PC support all to no avail. Of course, machines know when you are stressed and unreasonable and responding in the way I did. So I failed to get the PC working and had to resort to somebody else having to take over my role with their PC.
PROBLEM – I had inadvertently pressed a ‘Function’ key on the PC, which converted 9 keys on the right hand side of the keyboard into a ‘number pad’.
When I keyed in my ‘ID’ I used the numbers at the top of the keyboard.
But when I keyed in my ‘password’ I used the letter keys on the keyboard, some of which were being substituted by numbers – and there was no way I would realise this as the password is clearly only shown as dots when keyed.
MORAL – I could have been there for hours and not figured this out – but I had a fighting chance to do it quickly if I hadn’t lost my rag. And PC support would have had a small chance of sorting this out in a couple of minutes if I’d been courteous with them. But because this was a 1-in-a-100 problem, as soon as I got flustered and panicked I was done for.
Easy to say in hindsight, and in ‘cold blood’, but as we are always told ‘It’s nice to be important, but even more important to be nice..’ We live and we learn..
A long time ago, but still able to give me nightmares..
Bedd’s experience echos my earlier post about the staying in the Valium bubble. No matter how badly things are going, anything other than a calm, measured response is going to make the situation more difficult to resolve. Any losing of one’s rag needs to be saved for after the presentation is over.
Seems like something that will need to be added to The Principles. Just need to come up with a pithy phrase to describe it. How’s this sound: “Letting it loose might mean losing it all”? Yeah, I thought so. That’s just off the top of my head. It might be better to keep thinking about it.
Thanks Bedd, I really appreciate you taking the time to share this obviously painful memory. It serves as a great reminder to all of us who are dropped into these sorts of situations on a daily basis.
Your Turn:
Do you have a better idea than “Letting it loose might mean losing it all”? Have things ever gone from bad to much worse due to your losing it during a presentation or while preparing for one?
Do you expect to be attending any important business meetings in the United States this coming Thursday or Friday?
 ©iStockphoto.com/Suzifoo I didn’t think so. It’s safe to say a that large percentage of my readers are expecting to spend this Thursday (Thanksgiving) through Sunday eating, drinking, shopping and hanging out with family and friends.
However, say you had absolutely no choice but to hold a meeting this Friday due to extremely desperate circumstances. Perhaps there is emergent fallout from a worldwide economic crisis that has to be dealt with immediately. Unfortunately, this situation isn’t as unusual as it once was.
Needless to say, it’s not out of the question that a meeting could take place over the Thanksgiving holiday. BUT, you can be absolutely certain that an experienced meeting planner will take the date into account and will make special plans to ensure things go smoothly. For instance, chartered flights might be used rather than commercial airlines. Special arrangements might need to be made for accommodations due to all local hotels being booked solid. Arrangements that would ordinarily be considered routine and low risk might need to have several levels of backup just to be certain everyone is where they need to be when they need to be there.
What about other dates that are equally disruptive but aren’t as well know as Thanksgiving? For instance local holidays or events.
I was once involved with preparing a presentation for a major meeting mandated by a federal agency that just happened to be slated to take place in early Spring in Washington, DC. Imagine our surprise when we discover that it was virtually impossible to find enough hotel rooms for our entire team. It turns out our meeting was taking place right in the middle of a little local event know as the National Cherry Blossom Festival.
“More than 700,000 people visit Washington each year to admire the blossoming cherry trees that herald the beginning of spring in the nation’s capital.”
We ended up staying in the far suburbs at a non-preferred hotel and had to make special arrangements to be sure we all got to the actual venue on time for the meeting. If I remember correctly, these arrangements included a very early morning departure and a massively unpopular boxed breakfast on the bus. Overall the meeting was a success but I can’t say for sure that we arrived primed to reach peak performance levels.
We saw the cherry blossoms through the bus windows on the way into and out of town and, believe it or not, we found them less than charming.
Just to be on the safe side, if you are planning a big meeting or giving a high-stakes presentation, check well in advance to see if there are any local “turkey days” that might have an impact on you calendar decisions, travel arrangements or the way you prepare to present. This is especially important if you will be depending on local resources to help create presentation materials or if you need a lot of hotel rooms.
Hope you all have a great holiday. I’ll be back on Sunday with this week’s Might Have Missed List. The only venue-related planning I’m going to be doing this week is figuring out how to claim the comfiest chair in my sister’s living room after doing serious damage to a turkey day dinner.
Related resource:
HotelChatter — Stranded at the Airport Over Thanksgiving? Check-In At These Hotels
Your turn:
Are there any local events or holidays where you are located that might have an negative impact on a meeting or on someone’s ability to present that aren’t well know outside of the immeadiate area? Have you ever fell victim to one of these local events or holidays? Have you ever seen the cherry blossoms in DC?
[UPDATE: This post outlines an addition to “The Principles”. The post that started it all is here. The most up-to-date version will be maintained at breakingmurphyslaw.com/the-principles/.]
 A couple weeks ago, when I posted “The Seven Principles of Presentation Disaster Avoidance (Version 0.1 beta)” I knew two things right off the bat (even before all the great reader feedback I received):
- The title of the post didn’t do it justice. It was lame. Flat. It used the word “avoidance” for God’s sake. I’ve been kicking around other ideas. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.
- It would be a mistake to put the number of principles in the title because no matter how many I was able to come up with for the initial post, more were bound to follow.
And follow they did.
Here’s the first:
#8 Existence does not equal adequacy.
This somewhat poetic passage from a recent Ratphooey Live Journal post illustrates the principle in action:
I am writing this from a conference center in State College, PA.
A conference center that’s supposed to have wireless internet access.
Two measly bars does not wireless internet access make, my friends.
I had to walk down the hall to get a decent signal.
See what I’m getting at? If you were diligent and called the conference center ahead of time, anyone they allow to answer the phone would have told you that they have wireless internet access (“of course we have internet access”). However, having something and having something adequate to the task at hand are two very different things.
For instance, if you were downloading the most recent version of your presentation, the one containing the emergency, last minute slides with all of mandatory changes dictated by the CEO, and it was 15 minutes before you were due to go on, and you only had two bars, the wireless internet access, for all intents and purposes, might as well not even be there.
Some other presentation requirements that are susceptible to this issue:
- Document duplication capabilities (“We have a copy machine” might mean an obsolete desktop unit without a document feeder that jams on every third page and doesn’t collate/staple). Always be sure to find out where the nearest Kinkos is before you leave.
- On-site AV support staff (“I’m more a sound tech”, he said as he hit the automatic keystone correction button on the projector over and over again trying to figure out why the left edge of the image kept getting cut off.) If it’s you own equipment, you have a responsibility to know it inside and out. If it belongs to the venue, you might be out of luck.
- “Business centers” in that part of the world known more for sipping rum-based beverages on the beach than for supporting high-level business presentations. (Remarkably easygoing hotel manager to distraught meeting planner: “They’re usually open by now, sometimes they don’t come in until the afternoon. Come check back a little later.”)
Just don’t ask if the venue has what you need — get details. Always go and check it out in person if possible.
Remember principle #1: “If you can’t do without it, make sure you won’t have to.”
[UPDATE: “The Principles” is going to be a living document and will be updated and added to on a regular basis. This post is where it all started and the rationale for the project can be found at the end.
The most up-to-date version will be maintained at http://www.breakingmurphyslaw.com/the-principles/.]
1.
If you can’t do without it,
make sure you won’t have to.
Have backups of your slide files, have backup for your critical equipment, have backups for your people. Have backups.
2.
Any rational response to
“What’s the worse that can happen?”
is most likely wrong.
This is mainly due to the fact that the things that can go wrong are not limited by a requirement to be rational. Just ask Wall Street. And don’t forget that the person asking this question usually doesn’t want to know the real answer, they’re just ready to move on.
3.
If you practice like it’s the real thing,
the real thing will seem like a practice.
That’s why they use live ammo in boot camp.
4.
It’s much easier to destroy something by accident
than it is to create something on purpose.
Be very careful around fragile equipment, electricity, icy roads and, perhaps most importantly, the delete key. Especially while pulling an all-nighter. You also want to aggressively seek ways to eliminate as much of the accidental from your process as possible.
5.
The diagram is not the room.
Whether it a conference room, ballroom, or theater — see the space you will be working in for yourself. The diagram provided by the venue will not reveal everything you need to know — no matter how detailed and accurate it is.
6.
If you’re not early, you’re late.
A simple problem that would ordinarily not require anything more than time to fix can become a fatal error when the time isn’t available.
7.
The ways to get it right are few.
The ways to get it wrong, infinite.
It’s always possible that a string of several very small, seemingly unimportant decisions, can lead to a major failure. Be cautious when it appears a choice can be made casually.
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Okay, we’ve all been there. We’ve all been caught up in the heat of the moment at one time or another. It usually happens when you’ve been working far too hard for far too long and it’s getting more and more difficult to decide what needs to be done and how to go about doing it. All you want to do is get through the presentation without anything going wrong but there’s some doubt (and usually several competing opinions) about how to make this happen.
The above principles are an attempt to condense the lessons learned from stories I’ve heard and presentation disasters I’ve witnessed down to a useful handful of easy to remember axioms. Think Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanacs focused on the presentation preparation process (light purse, heavy heart;
hunger never saw bad bread; a penny saved is a penny yadda, yadda, yadda).
Ideally, they will be memorable enough to come to mind when they are most needed and true enough to clarify challenging situations. I think “pithy” is a good word to describe what I’m shooting for. The insights embodied in these principles do not need to be particularly original or surprising, they just need to provide the perspective, guidance and the modicum of common sense that can lead to the appropriate course of action.
I need you to tell me whether or not the principles above, will actually be useful in real life. Do they capture your experience of the presentation process? Did I miss anything? Do they need to be called something else (I suspect the current title is a little clunky)? Please use the comments or the contact form to let me know your thoughts, ideas, additions or criticisms.
I’d also like to hear from you where you think I should go with this project. I assume it will be living document. What would you like it to look like? Where should I “park” it? Maybe a wiki? A shared google doc?
 1) You weren’t particularly careful about your pre-presentation meal choices. Washing down the street vendor’s Khlav Kalash with Crab Juice might not have been the best idea you’ve had recently.
2) Your time is too valuable to fly in the night before your presentation. “Leaving early in the morning will be fine. Two hours is plenty of time to get from the airport to the hotel.”
3) “I’m too tired to figure out the alarm clock. I’ll just call down to the front desk for a wake up call.”
4) “I burned my presentation to a CD, I’ll just hand it off to the AV guys as I head for the stage. Yeah, I use (pick one):
- a Mac.
- unusual fonts.
- something other than PowerPoint.
Why would that be a problem?”
5) “Backup copies? If I lose the CD, the office can always email me a copy of the file. There will be plenty of time and all the hotels have good wireless internet access now.”
 ©iStockphoto.com/TommL 6) “I’m flying out right after the meeting so I only need one change of clothes. I like to travel light and what’s the worst that can happen?”
7) “I’m sure the hotel will give us exactly the AV equipment we asked for. Of course it will work perfectly.”
 ©iStockphoto.com/katsgraphicslv As a male, morning sickness is one potential presentation problem I never had to deal with on a personal level (unless you count being vicariously acquainted with it in the way only the father of three can be). As far as I know, none of the speakers I worked with were contending with it while presenting.
It must be a concern for someone out there. My referral logs showed a recent visitor made it to Breaking Murphy’s Law by searching for “giving presentations with morning sickness.” In fact, a BML post from last August is the top result for this search even though pregnancy-related nausea isn’t actually the topic of the post. I checked out the other results for this search and tried a few searches of my own.
There were several pleas to a higher power that went something like this:
Dear Lord – I have to do a presentation for our board tomorrow. Please don’t let me puke during this presentation. Please let T forget to wear her noxious perfume that will instantly make me puke if I smell it.
I also found these cute designer vomit bags. I know I would feel a whole lot better about losing my brunch in front of the board if I could pull one of these out of my briefcase.
 ©iStockphoto.com/gioadventures There was lots of general advice on how to lessen morning sickness symptoms, but nothing on what to do when you need to be behind the lectern at the same time you really need to be on your way to eloquently addressing a porcelain bowl.
Does anyone have a story they are willing to share about a time when the need to be a presenter came into direct, hormonal, bacon-odor-fueled conflict with early pregnancy? Any advice? Please use the comment section and help the mothers-to-be out there googling for experience-based information.
A couple of alert BML readers were kind enough to send me a couple links to share. One is useful in a practical sort of way, the other is useful as well as slightly horrifying:
Marcel Oudejans of Perform! Marketing Solutions let me know about a really good Clive Simpkins article, “How to treat your speaker at an event“.
There’s a time-sequence and often a ‘value chain’ of people involved in a speaker arriving at an event. So let’s back-up to the beginning. Whether you’re a private individual within an organisation, a professional conference organiser (PCO), a speaker bureau or an agent, then in the interests of professionalism, all, or some at least, of the following, needs to happen.
Each of Clive’s suggestions can play an important role in making sure Murphy’s Law doesn’t have a chance to come into play at an event. I strongly recommend that you add everything in this article to your standard operating procedures.
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 Rick Pillars (it’s a rap productions) sent me a link to to a story that boggles the mind. His only comment — “Check out what happens when you do things you shouldn’t while connected to a projector…lol.”
The crux of the story:
That’s when students said the teacher began viewing the videos.
“He forgot the projector screen was turned on and he started watching porn and we were all just like sitting there shocked that he was watching this in front of the class.”
Students said they did try to signal the teacher but he never looked up from his computer.
Note that it says “videos.” Plural.
Although most of us (I hope) would never think of engaging in this particular behavior while on the job, this story still provides a powerful reminder. It’s scary how easy it is for for the wrong thing to be projected at the wrong time unless precautions are put in place to prevent it. And in a corporate environment, it doesn’t even have to be pornography to be a career ending event. I’m sure we’ve all seen an accidental projection of an embarrassingly personal email, highly confidential memo or spreadsheet that was never meant for public consumption. For heaven’s sake people, be careful when you’re passing the VGA cable around the conference room table. Think about what’s on your laptop’s desktop before you connect.
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If you’re an alert BML reader and come across a link to a story or resouce that might be of interest to other, not so alert BML readers, please send it in. You can use the link to the Contact page above or you can email it directly to lee@leepotts.com.
[Photo credit: Andreas Frank]
Nicholas Bate is, among other things, a successful author and business consultant. A recent post on his blog not only offered a useful and refreshingly pragmatic pre-meeting checklist, it also dovetailed nicely with a recent post of my own. Nicolas and I both strongly feel that it’s crucial to arrive at the presentation venue early enough to make sure every part of the environment you are about to preform in is in an optimal state. If the first time you step into the meeting room is two minutes before you step up to the lectern, you better be prepared for any number of things to go wrong. The story Nicholas was kind enough to share illustrates how showing up the day before made it possible to get a little extra sleep:
As you will know from Lee’s posts if there is one thing which enhances your chances of a great presentation, it’s preparation. And that’s certainly something I am committed to when I am delivering a work-shop or key-note. The preparation has two parts, ideally. Part 1: a quick ‘recce’ of the room the previous day/evening just to identify any surprises/challenges and get those resolved. Part 2 is getting into the room prior to the delegates to set up and get all perfect for them. This ritual has become tried and tested for me and hasn’t let me down, identifying many problems with enough time for them to be resolved.
Several years ago I was doing a lot of international travel and had just flown back from Boston, USA to the UK (my home). Poor diary management on my part meant I arrived back in the UK the day before my next work-shop. I arrived late at the location, gave the room a once-over and with the hotel staff sorted a lot of issues. Then went to bed exhausted, knowing we started at 0900. I awoke at 0840 having slept through two alarms! I jumped up, showered and grabbed my materials, ran down the corridor and arrived in the room at 0855. We started on time at 0900. The work-shop went brilliantly.
The lessons?
- The prior-day check up saved my skin. It’s worth doing if you can.
- Jet-lag can cause extreme exhaustion: set plenty of alarms!
- Manage your diary to avoid back-to-back big events: your mind/body needs some down-time.
- BUT here’s the real lesson. I had no time to do my normal prep on that morning, run through my notes etc., but it went went really well, anyway-which was a real lesson to me that we can over-prepare. That is, if we basically know our stuff (which we should do, of course!) a ‘flow’ state can be reached where by people get an ‘even better’ experience: more real, more connected. Athletes call this being ‘in the zone’ of course.
Something to think about!
Thanks to Lee for inviting me to post
I usually make a point of trying to take a some time to chat with the people who work for the venue when I’m on site. I like to hear their stories about the unusual things they’ve seen happen in the meeting rooms. It never ceases to amaze me how often their stories are about speakers that come bustling into the meeting room minutes before they are scheduled to go on (which I guess means it actually isn’t all that unusual). They hand off their slides to the AV crew on a thumb drive hoping against hope that they will project correctly. They stop for a second so the sound guy can slap on a lavalier (sound check, who has time for a sound check?). They have no time to familiarize themselves with the remote control, the stage, the podium. At this point it’s far too late to change or fix anything that might detract from the audience’s experience. This is the situation Nicholas would have inadvertently been in if he hadn’t taken time to check things out the night before.
Your turn:
Has there ever been a time that you wished there was more time devoted to on-site, pre-presentation preparation? Were you ever really, really glad you had a chance to spend extra preparing? Please share you experiences in a comment to this post.
I’ve been blessed with both a pessimistic nature and a vivid imagination so it’s not surprising that I consider the creating and updating of contingency plans one of the best parts of my job.
Trying to anticipate everything that can possibly go wrong during any part of the presentation process is pretty standard stuff in our industry and we all know that it’s impossible to prevent or control every eventuality.
 This weekend’s Labor Day holiday brings to mind one of those challenging contingencies that can’t be prevented by a mere presenter or their support team and that is equally difficult for them to control. One that (so far) I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid — a strike or work stoppage happening at the presentation venue.
There was a strike like this in Boston last June where a large association meeting was taking place. Apparently there weren’t any repercussions for the meeting or the presenters but it would be interesting to know what plans they made when it became clear that the strike could become an issue.
Have you ever had to deal with a strike during a meeting or presentation? If so, please add a comment below and share with us what happened and how you were able to deal with it.
I hope my American readers enjoy their holiday weekend.
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