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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This blog was active from April, 2008 to July 2012.
It is no longer being updated. It will continue to be maintained for reference purposes.

The Weekly Might Have Missed List (12/07/08)

Empower Your Point: Context matters : Avoid turkey slaughter in the background — “While watching, it was very hard to focus on her : I totally missed the meaning of her interview. All I actually saw was this crazy man with his poor turkeys… I would much rather be an average presenter in an excellent context ( interested audience, computers working fine, etc.), than an excellent presenter in a horrible context ( say for instance with a turkey killer in my back)! Don’t get me wrong : Context is no excuse. It is your responsibility to make sure that everything is going to be fine.”

Corporate Presenter: Presenting on Television — “Even rehearsing your lines until you are blue in the face won’t always help you getting it right to camera.”

controlbooth.com: crappy cd player/bad cd??? — “So we’re up here in the booth, and randomly during an explosion cue, the cd player jumped tracks to curtain call music!! Nobody was touching the thing, and the sound consultant behind me said “that wasn’t you, it jumped a track”. Wtf????”

The Next Meeting: Virtual or Otherwise, You Need to Prepare for Meetings — “Let’s face it, the new technology available for virtual meetings, while exciting, isn’t quite perfect.  You need to make some allowances for that. If you’ll be making a presentation, it’s really important to practise it ahead of time.  Make sure it’s as clear as it can possibly be.  You may not have the benefit of your colleagues’ blank stares to tell you they don’t understand you, so you won’t be able to adjust on the fly.” Other good ideas.

Humor Power: When Humor Mis-Fires (Part Three) — “It had never occurred to me that this joke could mis-fire.  It got a good laugh, but as soon as I returned to my seat, I had second thoughts about using the line.”

Great Speaking Coach: Avoid Q&A Traps — “When you invite questions at the end of your presentation you run a substantial risk that one question derails the point of your whole presentation–and then you can’t recover your own momentum.”

Great Public Speaking: THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE — “I’m talking about the dreaded MICROPHONE BULGE. Unless you use a handheld microphone, or a wired clip on microphone (which causes you to trip over the wire all day) in one way or the other you have to deal with a wireless transmitter bulge in your clothing.
This needs to be addressed when you are purchasing the clothing you plan on wearing when you speak. … Sometimes I put the transmitter right in my pants pocket. That way there is no way it will fall off or come unclipped even if I get a little boisterous on stage.”

ChrisMoncus.com: How to Properly Wrap a Cable (the Over and Under Roadie Wrap) — Rolling up your cables (especially the one connecting your laptop to the projector) and storing them the right way helps to prevent them from failing when it might be more than a little inconvenient.

Hotel Chatter: You’d Better Find a Couch to Sleep on for Inauguration — Hope you’re not trying to do any regular business in DC around the 20th of January. Posted about this sort of thing a week or so ago.

PowerPoint Ninja: 13 Ways to Quickly Derail a PowerPoint Presentation — Part I — Starts with something dear to our hearts here at BML – “Technical difficulties: You and your audience are ready, but why aren’t the slides appearing or why isn’t the audio working? Delays caused by technical problems can cause you to quickly lose and never reclaim an audience. Leave nothing to chance.”

Just for fun:

Six Minutes: Gifts Public Speakers Really Want: Dozens of Christmas Ideas

Fortify Your Oasis: Weekend treat for Road Warriors — “As someone who has spent far too many nights in far too many hotel rooms around the world, these words of John Cleese’s have an all-too-familiar ring to them. Come to think of it, it sounds like I’ve stayed in some of these hotels.” (Video)

The Weekly Might Have Missed List (10/19/08)

Subjective: The Artful Life: If I Turn This Off Now We Will Go Into Darkness — Snarky description of a presentation that went very wrong (in more ways than one). “Enter PSU IT guy (well, enter his speaking role anyway, as he’d been poking about at the podium for a few minutes at this point). Oh higher educated IT guy, explain to us simple art enthusiasts why things have gone so wrong: ‘Well, the old projector had this button you could push that fixed this problem and this new projector doesn’t have the same buttons.'”

©iStockphoto.com/hammondovi

©iStockphoto.com/hammondovi

Life in the Corporate Theater: International Shows — “On Thursday I am headed for Prague, so I started pulling out supplies that I will need for working in Europe.” Great ideas for preparing to work overseas including several items you may never have thought of.

Craig Strachan: A lesson in being prepared — “Last night, I spoke at a function in Cape Town, and I was almost in big trouble.”

If you travel a lot, you might also want to check out One Bag: The Art and Science of Traveling Light.

Signal vs. Noise: Going in Unprepared — “This year I’ve spoken at about a dozen or so conferences and another dozen or so meetings or classes or gatherings. What I’ve started to notice is that I’m better unprepared.”

Blue Room technical forum: Macs, The pick of the current crop is…? — “After a day of trauma with several visiting speakers turning up with presentations prepared on Macs, and them only sort of working on PCs, I’m thinking that the best fix may be to get a Mac myself. Never having used one in anger for this sort of stuff, I thought I’d ask here as well as my friendly Geek forum.”

Great Public Speaking: Keystone Effect — “When a projector is not exactly on a level plain with a projection screen the projected image is not symmetrical.”

The Next Meeting: Making every second count at virtual meetings — “The key to achieving a successful virtual meeting is being prepared for both the expected and the unexpected. That means you must take your personal knowledge of your own virtual team and all the virtual office jobs concerned and use them to anticipate all the things that you might encounter when holding meetings.”