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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“If you’re early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late. If you’re late, you’re replaced.”
 Every boss I’ve had since I got into the business considered call time to be holy writ. As in (imagine a big, echoing, Monty Python-esque voice of God) “Thou Shall NOT Be Late For Call Time!” Especially on show day. That’s all fine and dandy. Problem is, call time is often very early in the morning and you most likely stayed up very late putting the finishing touches on things (slides, sound check, six pack, etc.).
Then you need to deal with the alarm clock provided by the hotel. Setting an unfamiliar alarm clock can be a dicey proposition to begin with. But have you noticed how the people who procure room furnishings for major hotel chains all seem to have a fetish for really unusual, hard-to-decipher alarm clocks? How about this little number that Mark Hurst ran into recently. It’s so difficult to set, the hotel printed up special instruction cards. Guess they got a lot of complaints. There are five steps to setting the alarm, seven if you count steps that are repeated. I can see how it might be easy to accidentally set the alarm for 5:00 pm instead of 5:00 am. This happened to a co-worker a few years ago. He felt more than a little sheepish when he final made it downstairs to the ballroom. His boss was kind enough to provide him with a personal wake up call for the remainder of our stay. The rest of us were kind enough to “accidentally” set our phone and watch alarms to go off every one and a while just to rub it in.
I know what you’re thinking. Just call down to the front desk for and request a good old fashion wake up call. Nice idea, but due to increasing pressure to save money, more and more hotels are switching to automated wake up call systems that guests program themselves using the telephone’s keypad. When you’re already half asleep, these can be as dicey as the overly fancy alarm clock, without any visual confirmation that you might have actually gotten it right. And even when you do talk to a real human, there’s a good possibility that the wake up call won’t actually happen. Especially when you calling at 3:00 am and it sounds like you woke the desk clerk from his own deep, restorative sleep. Traditional wake up calls can’t be counted on and should be considered only a backup at best.
You also need to remember that both the automated wake up call system, as well as the bedside alarm clock, are vulnerable to power outages.
The best bet is to use both of these methods, but rely on your own devices to be absolutely secure in your ability to regain consciousness in time to keep the boss happy. This means having your own travel alarm clock and/or setting the alarm on your phone.
Then you need to set up a phone circle:
- Make a list of everyone who needs to be awake
- Decide on a wake up window (let’s say 4:00 to 4:15 am for example.)
- Starting at 4:00 am each person calls the next person on the list and confirms they are awake and conscious enough to make it to the shower. The last person on the list is responsible for calling the first person.
- At 4:15, If you’re awake and made your call, but haven’t heard from the person above you on the list, you are responsible for reversing the circle and waking the person who was supposed to wake you. The calls should continue in the revered direction until they reach the person who broke the original circle.
Related Resources:
Missed wakeup call – Should I be compensated? –Great discussion on a frequent flyer forum about the wake up call problem. Confirms that the no hotel guarantees waking you up at a particular time and offers some other interesting backsup systems: “I don’t know if this is myth, but I read that American Indians used pre-bed water as an alarm. You know, 2 glasses to get up at 5, 3 glasses to get up at 4, etc. Of course, if you’re groggy and inclined to go back to bed after using the toilet, that doesn’t work.”
Wakerupper — “Wakerupper aims to make telephone alerting as easy and inexpensive as possible by enabling users to schedule reminder calls to telephones in the United States and Canada in one step, on one simple web page – for free. Enter the number of the phone you would like to be called on, the time you want to receive the call, and an optional 140-character reminder message and you will receive a call from Wakerupper at the time you specified.”
Your Turn:
Have you ever missed a call time? If so, fess up by adding a comment to this post. Hopefully the story you share might help others avoid facing the same situation. We would also love to hear about any other wake up system you might have come up with or heard about someone else using.
Rusty: You scared?
Linus: You suicidal?
Rusty: Only in the morning.
(Ocean’s Eleven)
Sometimes, the thing that is going to go wrong with your presentation actually starts going wrong long before you step up to the lectern. Sometimes, a disaster is sneaking up on you while your sleeping the night away in tranquil ignorance. If you’re lucky, you have some time to fully wake up, shower, eat and get yourself to the venue before the day begins go south. If you’re less lucky, you’ll wake up, ready to face the day, and it will suddenly and dreadfully become apparent that your recent unconsciousness was a blessing. And even though your still in bed, it’s already too late to do anything about it.
 Public speaking presentation skills coach Lisa Braithwaite has over fifteen years professional public speaking experience and is fortunate enough to only have had one of so I’m willing to assume she’s no stranger to this sort of mornings. In the story she has kindly shared with us today, she describes how it went for her and why it’s so important for us to gut it out when we would rather just give in.
For six years I worked for a domestic violence organization. Part of my job was to speak to high school students about healthy and unhealthy relationships. I usually gave 3-4 presentations a day and made the rounds to all the schools in the district each semester.
One day, I was scheduled to give several presentations in a row. I woke up with terrible flu symptoms: I was weak, I had a fever, my head was pounding, and I was seriously debilitated. I called the school to cancel my engagement.
They called the teacher to the phone — the substitute teacher, that is. The substitute teacher who had no lesson plan because she had been expecting me. Even worse, the students — who normally sat at computers in their business class — were displaced for the day and had to meet in the cafeteria. I faced a teacher with no lesson plan, and students with no computers. The teacher begged and pleaded with me to show up, and I had no backup speaker. So I did.
I filled a water bottle with herbal tinctures and headed over to the school. My energy level was nowhere near my normal capacity, but I dug deep and gave them everything I had. I powered echinacea during the breaks and held it together until the classes were over.
Now, I don’t recommend infecting people with viruses. This was a special instance, a difficult decision, a case of “the show must go on.”
You may be having a bad hair day. You may not feel your best. You may have stubbed your toe, hammered your thumb and squirted mustard down your shirt. Guess what: the audience doesn’t care!
Your job is always to put the audience first. No matter what. If you show up with a frown and a slouch, you will not be successful in connecting with your audience. You will not be successful in getting your message across. You will not be successful, period. Furthermore, you won’t be invited back, you won’t be referred to other organizations, and you won’t get that positive word of mouth that’s so critical for a speaker.
So suck it up. Be passionate even if you don’t feel passionate. Engage your audience even if you want to curl up in bed with a box of tissues. It’s your responsibility to give everything you’ve got. You’ll feel so much better if you put yourself out there. Maybe not at that moment, but later for sure.
I want to point out that Lisa’s wake up call doesn’t just apply to the folks behind the lectern. It’s also crucial that everyone who makes it possible for the presenter to present needs to be there and as ready to roll as much as possible. Even if you’re fighting the flu, food poisoning, a difficult client or plain, old fashioned, run-of-the-mill, early morning ennui. Sometimes you just need to fake it until you make it.
Don’t forget to visit Lisa’s blog, Speak Schmeak.
Related Resources:
One of the few good reasons for not coming in and giving your all — That Brain-Eating Virus.
Your Turn:
I just installed the shiny new Disqus 2.0 comment system on BML. Why don’t you help break it in by leaving a comment describing a time when you, or someone you know, had to force themselves to not just turn around and go back to bed because of illness or other serious presentation problem.
 Rick Pillars and I had been exchanging comments related to an earlier post (Four words you don’t want to hear coming from the video conference room at 7:00 am) until WordPress ate his last response:
I am more of a high res video specialist so I don’t pretend to know audio all that well. However, I am pretty sure that neither blowing or tapping is very good for the condenser mic. Spitting is ok. I know an audio engineer who gets really tweaked when an AV tech (someone who he thinks should know better) does either of those things.
Other things that you hope to not ever hear again:
- “Uhmmm, you know that Beta roll you wanted up next, I accidentally recorded over it.”
- “Oh crap, I just deleted half his slides and then hit save.”
- From the podium, “Guys, that’s not my presentation.” “No, not that one either.”
I don’t know about you, but each of those made me wince a little bit. What words do you never want to hear ever, ever again?
 As you may remember from an earlier post, my first real job was at a McDonald’s. Started the day after I turned sixteen. You might also remember that I got into some trouble because I didn’t deal with burning my fingers in way that had approval from corporate headquarters. They were funny about stuff like that.
They were also very, very specific about how every product that crossed the greasy steel counter — the fries, the milkshake, the secretive big mac, even the most humble hamburger –Â came into being.
 It began with the burger flipper’s tools-of-the-trade. They were to be arranged just so. You always put the spatula in one specific place. The bins with the pickles had to be all the way to the left with bin holding the now reconstituted. formally dehydrated onions were always next. The strange thumb-controlled funnel thingy that deposited exactly the right amount of ketchup was always in exactly in the same place, in it’s holder, on the end of the counter. The mustard funnel thingy was always to its right. At least that’s the way they did it back in the eighties.
In fact, they were even more picky, if you can believe it, with the way you actually put the burgers together. There were videos for God’s sake. Written tests.
The one part of the intricate construction process that’s stuck with me all these years is the importance of putting the mustard on the bun before the ketchup. If I remember correctly, they told us that this kept the mustard from coming into contact with the meat which burned it chemically and gave it a funny taste. Who knew?
And pickle slide placement, don’t get me started on pickle slice placement.
All this formality might seem silly, but being forced to be highly regimented in something as simple as making a hamburger was actually very useful. It was great when you were suddenly in the middle of a huge Saturday afternoon rush and everything was exactly where it was supposed to be and it almost became unnecessary to think about what you had to do next. As things got busier, and the shift ground on and on, and the brain got more tired, it was possible to enter a zone where the entire process flowed effortlessly out of a combination of muscle memory and mental habit.
What the heck does this have to do with presenting?
In the grand scheme of things, providing a good presentation experience is almost always more important than providing a good hamburger. So if someone is willing to put all that time, effort and thought into the process of serving up a Whopper, shouldn’t you be willing to apply a little additional rigor to thinking about how you go about preparing to do what you need to do as a presenter (or as someone helping a presenter)?
Are there parts of your preparation process that you haven’t given any thought to at all?
There’s a crucial file on your laptop, the PowerPoint for Monday’s presentation. Do you know exactly where it is? Is it on your desktop? If it in a folder, which one? Can you instantly and easily distinguish it from any other file that might be in the same folder? Are you absolutely certain you have the most current version?
You’re given a couple hours at most to set up. And the room layout doesn’t come close to matching the diagram they emailed (you didn’t do a site visit?) and you need to put the short throw lens into the projector. Quickly. Do you know exactly which case it’s in? Is it still out in the truck? You’re probably going to need a screw driver. Where is it?
Do you have a documented (or at least habitual) setup routine that will help save your butt when everything else is going completely to hell in a hand basket? Like that time. You remember. The snowstorm? The delayed flight? Getting to the hotel two hours before call time? Stiff necked, sleep deprived and brain dead but the show still had to go on.
Have a plan, have a routine, know how to find exactly what you need exactly when you need to find it. Or be prepared to find yourself going from being under fire to working the deep fryer.
 Laura Bergells has been active in internet marketing since before most people realized that marketing on the internet was possible. She’s given many presentations and has witnessed many more. Her highly-regarded blog, More than PowerPoint… has been going strong for five years now. She also happens to be a really terrific storyteller and was kind enough to share the following beverage meets business nightmare:
Years ago, my boss nervously entrusted me to give an important presentation. My boss was nervous for two reasons:
1) I would be presenting our project for final approval to the ultimate decision maker — the VP of Investor Relations at our company’s our largest client.
2) I have a flamboyant style and goofy sense of humor.
Now, I hadn’t yet met the VP, but knew her by reputation. She is impeccably poised and polished – a highly sophisticated intellectual.
Of course, I know there’s a time and place for goofy humor — and this wasn’t it. Nonetheless, my anxious boss saw fit to lecture me:
“She doesn’t suffer fools, Laura. So reign in your personality. Dial it down. This is our only chance, so don’t blow it.”
Armed with that oh-so special warning, how could anything go wrong? Jinxed, I tell you!
I drive 2 hours for the meeting. When I arrive, our client is on the phone & tells me she’ll be with me in five. I walk down a narrow hall to find a washroom to refresh myself.
As I do, a man with 2 steaming coffees in his hands walks briskly towards me. However, his head is turned over his shoulder and he’s yelling to someone far behind him.
Twelve ounces of scalding coffee hits the front of my white blouse. I howl in pain and run to the washroom as the man tries to initiate a conversation about how sorry he is.
I could care less about how sorry he is. I have bigger issues — burning skin, ruined shirt, no change of clothes, miles from home, an important presentation to deliver in 5 minutes, a nervous boss, and a VP who doesn’t like fools.
With all of my problems spinning in my head, I spend 5 minutes in the washroom failing to repair the damage to my skin and blouse. I come out looking like a try-out for the world’s worst wet T-shirt contest.
Taking a breath, I march into the VP’s office. I grin idiotically through the pain and cheerfully announce,
“Well, I’m back!”
Her mouth drops. She asks what the hell happened. When I explain, she is filled with nothing but pity for me. She even offers to loan me one of her shirts (She’s 5 foot-nothing, I’m 6-foot-one. I thank her, but explain that it probably wouldn’t work out.)
I go on to give the presentation, looking like a hot, disheveled tramp instead of a polished professional.
I made the sale.
Pity sale! But I deserved it!
And more importantly, the woman and I are still friends to this day.
Turns out that yes, she’s a polished, sophisticated intellectual — but she’s human, too. People tolerate mistakes better than our frazzled imaginations let us believe.
But since then, I’ve learned to ALWAYS travel with a change of clothes…just in case!
Since I’m more involved with the AV-slash-stage-crew type stuff, I tend to focus making sure the presentation files and the equipment is backed up in case something happens. Have to admit I haven’t given much thought to backing up wardrobe. But if my presenters are operating in an environment where there’s no such thing as a “pity sale” I guess I need start thinking about it. Having a wardrobe malfunction of any kind can seriously throw the confidence and perceived credibility of even the most experienced speaker.
Thanks again, Laura, for being brave enough to share this story with us. I’d like to remind the other readers of this site that they are welcomed and encouraged to submit any stories or anecdotes they have relating to presentation disaster or presentation disaster narrowly averted. You can be fully credited or remain safely anonymous, whichever you prefer. Come on folks, we all know you want to tell somebody what happened. Just click on the “Contact” tab above to get in touch.
Steve LaRose is an AV/IT tech in the corporate presentation business. He gets to travel all over the world staying in some really glamorous places doing some rather unglamorous work. If anyone in the world is intimately acquainted with Murphy’s Law and how to go about breaking it, it’s Steve and the army of pros like him who keep all those meetings moving. And he has the stories to prove it. You can read them on his blog — Life in the Corporate Theater. Here are some excerpts:
Rob hadn’t gotten any of the presentations last night. They didn’t do an official slide review. This morning, they came in with a whole bunch of presentations for him to load up.
The agenda showed about 8 presentations, and they handed Rob about 15. He ended up having to string all these slides together, and things still seemed weird. There was a presentation in there that had a thank you slide at the end of it, and then another 15 slides after the thank you. So, things were pretty unsettling this morning. Continue reading Life in the Corporate Theater
When you’re the slide guy, once all the presentations have been thoroughly PowerPointed and the meeting has started, they need to find something for you to do so you’re not just hanging around enjoying yourself. At least that was the case at an earlier point in my career. These days I’m also the AV guy and I get to show the slides as well as make them. I’m also the roadie, but that’s a different story.
I’m not even sure what you would have called what they had me doing back then. Production assistant maybe? I was wearing headphones, hanging at the front of the room herding speakers. The technical director and the rest of the crew communicated with the speakers through me once the meeting started. I was also responsible for giving each of them a quick visual check before they took the stage.
Ostensibly, I was making sure they took off their name badges and turned on their lavalier microphones. The badges needed to come off because the spotlights lighting the stage reflected off their badges and the flashing could be distracting for the audience. I was also told to discretely check for a couple other things — making sure flys were up, for instance (I kid you not).
Having someone to do this sort of stuff made things a lot easier for the speakers and let them focus on speaking, not on the necessary last-second minutiae. Unfortunately, not every event can provide this level of luxury. That means if your a presenter, you usually need to fill that role yourself.
Develop and memorize a very brief pre-presentation checklist, something you can quickly rattle off to yourself while you’re waiting to be introduced that captures all those little things that can make presenting difficult if overlooked or forgotten: zipper zipped, badge removed, water bottle, laser pointer, speaking notes, glasses, etc. Remind yourself to smile and make eye contact. Ritualize it. Make it a habit.
You may also want to think about a post-presentation checklist. Two quick suggestions to start the list off: put your badge back on and don’t forget to leave the remote control at the podium for the next speaker.
Related resources:
12 Tips For How to Relax Just Minutes Before You Speak — You might want to add a couple of these to you pre-presentations checklist.
Your turn:
In a comment to this post, let us know what other items would you put on your pre-presentation checklist.
 I brought a very bad habit with me when I started my first real job. Considering it was the day after I turned 16, I guess it’s not unusual that I still might have had a bad habit or two left. It wasn’t an uncommon habit. Whenever I burned my finger tips, I reflexively touched them to my tongue before shaking them (just like a Polaroid picture). Considering I was employed by the local McDonald’s, my managers were, understandable, not terrible pleased with this. At this particular franchise, the grill faced the front counter and I was in full view of the customers waiting for their Big Macs. This habit was quickly and brutally broken using the two time-tested methods that work best with inexperienced 16 year olds — ridicule and the raised voice.
Believe it or not, there was still a bad habit or two remaining once I became a member of the adult workforce. One of them was no big deal when I was stuck back in the office, but once I went out to work at meeting venues, in front of clients waiting, as it were, for their Big Macs, it became much more of an issue. Let’s just say I tended to get a little too caught up in the moment, a little too passionate when things didn’t go according to plan. Again, nothing uncommon, but definately not behavior you want to exhibit in our line of work. Luckily this bad habit didn’t last much after my first professional road trip, due, in large part, to some very good advice I got from my boss.
I had been in a quiet corner of the rehearsal room working on some slides. If I remember correctly, PowerPoint had just done something stupid and I had just lost an hour’s work (to be honest, it might have been user error). I responded with my usual passion and let loose a word or two that really aren’t meant for polite (or corporate) society. Turns out a couple client types were in discussion nearby and heard my little outburst clearly. My boss also heard me as she was sitting next to me and I was sharing my displeasure with her.
Apparently, one of the clients mentioned this it to her later, more out of amusement than anything else and she took me aside to point out the error of my ways. The way she put it stuck with me, and has served me well, ever since.
She said that as I was leaving my hotel room every morning that I was on site working a meeting, I needed to imagine I was surrounding myself with a “Valium bubble.” No matter what was going on, no matter how badly things were going, no matter what hell was breaking loose around me, the best, the only really useful response was a complete, thoughtful calm. Deal with the situation actively and directly, she advised me, but learn to leave the adrenaline upstairs in your room. Even when it’s the client getting over anxious and excited, it’s your responsibility not to join in, but to stay above it. The client might, at the time feel that you were not as fully engaged in the situation as they might have liked, but when they realize later, after the heat of the moment has passed, that your calm, cool, thoughtful reaction was the most productive, they will thank you.
She went on to say that some of the problem can be traced to anxiety over the possibility of screwing up and that it was crucial to get past that. A person who can get distracted by the possibility of doing something wrong is not going to be providing the best performance and will have a difficult time doing something right during a crisis.
I’m not going to pretend that my transformation was instantaneous. Habits, as we all know, are hard to break. I might have slipped once or twice while I began to put her idea into practice. And I have to admit, I still don’t always sleep soundly the night before the big show. However, putting on my Valium bubble and remaining calm when events are encouraging me to do otherwise has become more and more habitual over the years. It’s a good habit. A useful habit.
And although I don’t have any hard data to back this up, I’m convinced that one person’s calm can spread and help relax the rest of the team, and even perhaps the speakers, just before the presentations are about to begin. Stopping by the speaker’s breakfast buffet with a smile and a cheerful “good morning” can sometimes do a whole lot of good.
In case you’re wondering, I still don’t lick my fingers when I burn them. Thanks McDonald’s.
And thanks Barb, in case you’re reading this, for not only giving me one of the best pieces of professional advice I ever got, but also for giving me my big break to begin with.
Related Resource
The first two lines of Rudyard Kipling’s great (although somewhat sexist) poem If are: “If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.”
[Late addition] Krys Slovacek also wrote a post today about dealing with strong emotions when you’re onsite and it offers some excellent suggestions: Chill out!
Your Turn
What’s your method for getting ready to go into battle. How do you put on your game face? Do you have an equivalent to the Valium bubble? Please feel free to respond in a comment to this post.
 Heading out to my car the other day, I noticed pigeon spikes on some of the ledges in the parking garage. These spikes are just about the world’s nastiest looking preventive maintenance device. We’re talking strips of four inch long plastic or metal spikes designed to humanely discourage pigeons perching on, in or around a building. As I was driving out, I got to thinking that it might be useful to keep these spikes in mind while preparing a presentation.
Why? You may need to install the rhetorical equivalent of pigeon spikes in your presentation.
Every time you give a presentation, it’s very possible that you’re going to have someone (or even everyone) in the audience disagreeing with, discounting or criticizing what your are presenting. These folks may be acting very much like a flock of pigeons, swooping in, making a lot of noise and pooping all over. When this happens, things can often go very badly.
(Can you sense that a metaphor is about to beaten to death?)
Pigeons are attracted to certain architectural features of a building. The ledges of parking garages for example. These ledges are necessary, integral parts of the structure. You can’t just get rid of the pigeons by just getting rid of the ledges. The same goes for your presentation. Usually, it’s the most crucial content, the content you can’t do without, that will be the most attractive roosting spot for any pigeons in your audience.
I noticed that the spikes weren’t on every horizontal surface or even on every ledge in the garage. Apparently some places are likely to attract the attention of the pigeons, other aren’t. Either the maintenance staff waited and watched to get a sense of which parts of this particular structure the pigeons liked and installed the spikes as needed, or there are people out there who have learned the fine art of thinking like a pigeon and know where they are likely to roost before they even have a chance to do so.
You need to do the same thing with your presentation. Your words, slides, illustrations, ideas or assumptions are all potential places for the pigeons to land and you need to engage in some careful “roost modification.” This involves thinking carefully about how your presentation was received in the past (even if it’s just in rehearsals). It also might require you to try to think like the audience of an upcoming presentation to try to determine what might cause problems.
I’m not talking major changes here. Spikes like the ones I saw in the garage are designed to be virtually invisible and most people probably never noticed them before. Making your talk unattractive for the pigeons to land on might mean doing something as minor as tweaking your word choices. It might be a matter of setting expectations before you even start in with your actual material.
For instance, to statisticians, the word “significant” has a very specific meaning that’s not the same as the layman’s use of term. In every day usage, it usually means “of a noticeably or measurably large amount.” To a statistician it means “probably caused by something other than mere chance.” If you are talking about research results, and there are statisticians in your audience, you better be sure to use the word the right way. If you don’t, you’ll be hearing the flapping wings and dealing with a significant guano cleanup.
Sarah Lacy’s Mark Zuckerberg interview at SXSW is a great recent example of not thinking like the audience. It’s also attracted one of the largest, noisiest, messiest flocks of pigeons ever. Here are some recaps and analysis: Jeff Jarvis, RichardatDELL, RapSpace.tv.
I don’t think I’ll be going out on a limb by suggesting that you wouldn’t want something like that happening to you.
Related Resources
Ian’s Messy Desk: Know Your Audience Before Speaking to a Group — A great list of questions to help you begin to think like your audience.
Lorelle VanFossen makes a similar point only it’s about writing rather than presenting and it involves paper bags at the ballet rather than pigeons in the parking garage: Are You Blogging With Paper Bags and Pinks?
Laura Fitton shares a brief thought about thinking like your audience: Get Inside your Audience’ Heads.
Your Turn
Getting lucky: What did you almost put into a presentation that would, in retrospect, have turned out to be a perfect perch for the pigeons to poop from if you had left it in? Please respond as a comment.
 The last presentation before lunch was just getting started and I’m trying to find my copy of the agenda. Since I was the PowerPoint guy at that meeting, my day was pretty much over and I was hanging out with the crew in the control booth daydreaming about the lunch buffet. The technical director’s whispered, but emphatic, “uh oh!” brought me back. “Cover your eyes,” he said “it looks like we have a Jedi Master on stage.”
Huh?
Oh yeah, the speaker. He was rather, well, enthusiastic about using the laser pointer. Back and forth from one corner of the screen to the other. Waving it under every bullet point to underline its importance. Look out, here’s the dangerous part. He forgets to take his thumb off the button as he turns back to the audience. The little red dot slides across the audience like he’s a nervous hit man looking for his target. It’s lucky he doesn’t burn out a couple retinas. Whoops, he’s turning back to the screen. Good thing he’s not a Jedi Knight. That evil Sith lectern would be toast. I could almost hear the sound effects from that scene when Luke…
(sorry, got carried away)
Anyway, I think you see the point. If you’re going to use a laser pointer, use it correctly. Some suggestions:
- Many speakers seem to like holding onto the laser pointer to have something to do with their hands. They are using it as a security blanket. These are often the worst offenders. Try putting the pointer within easy reach on the lectern. It will be there when you need it but you’ll be less tempted to use it when you don’t.
- Make sure the laser light only goes where you want it to. It’s capable of attracting a lot of the audience’s attention, and that attention should be directed only where you need it to be. And never, ever point it toward the audience. (This illustrates another instance of the need for the presenter to control the light. There will be more on that in future posts).
- Make sure your hand is steady. It might be adrenaline, it might be the coffee, it doesn’t matter. It tends to make the audience uncomfortable when the little red dot won’t stay still and it’s clear that your hand is shaking.
- If the laser pointer is part of your remote control, try to get in enough practice with it so you’re less likely to hit the laser pointer button when you’re trying to advance the slides.
- Part of the problem with using the laser pointer is that you usually have to turn, at least partially, away from the audience. This makes it harder to engage them. It can also make it harder for the lectern microphone to pick up what you’re saying. Try to test the stage arrangement out in rehearsal. Can the lectern be turned slightly toward the screen? Can you wear a lavalier to support the lectern microphone?
Related Resources
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