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]