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It is no longer being updated.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.

Things you don’t want to hear anytime

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?

The Weekly Might Have Missed List (08/03/08)

Speak Schmeak (yet again): The power of language (or, how I got in trouble for saying “pee”) — “But it has revived an old question for me: How far can you push the comfort level of your audience? ”

slide:ology: Tips for Remote Presenters — Great tips from Nancy Duarte for avoid problem while doing a webinar. “When delivering a presentation online, each application used to display your content is very different. Host a dry run of your presentation in which you click through ALL your slides. Many of the applications lose transitions, builds, and animations. What works in PowerPoint may not work in the application hosting your presentation.”

Execupundit.com: What Can They Do To You? — “Somewhere I read about an executive who calmed the fears of an associate who’d blundered by telling her, “What do you think they (upper management) are going to do? Burn down your house? Take your children? The most they can do is fire you.”

Arunn Narasimhan: Decorum at an Academic Interview Presentation — “The Laser pointer used by the nervous candidate should auto turn off whenever it is pointed away from the board and in particular when the candidate turns and addresses the gathering.”

Toastmasters & Etc.: Let’s All Introduce Ourselves… — “Do you want to start out a meeting with “Let’s all introduce ourselves” at the beginning? I’m not a huge fan of this in general because it can get kind of out of control time wise (or very out of control), even with a small crowd, unless you’re careful. Three little anecdotes about this follow.”

Speaking about Presenting: How to manage unruly question time — “Ask each questioner to state their name before they ask their question or make a comment. They’re likely to behave better.”

CenterNetworks: I’ve Had Enough of “Live” at Conferences — “When I spend thousands of dollars and my time to attend a conference, I am really not interested in watching the Qik CEO broadcast the session live to everyone without paying attention to what’s going on in the moment. I also really don’t give a rats ass what people outside the conference think of what’s going on inside the room. I want to have the speaker’s full attention. I didn’t have that today – not by a longshot. And again, I am using this session as an example but the issue is much more widespread.”

Working Blue: They tried to make me go to conference, and I said NO, NO NO. . . — “I’m slated to give a brief talk to grad students about delivering conference papers, so I thought I’d start with the usual “conference blunders” routine. There are some immediate biggies that come to mind, but I know I’m overlooking some more subtle problems of conference paper downers. Any that I’m missing? Here’s my list:”

Seven Red: Top 20 4C’s Presentation Mistakes (Part 1) and Top 20 4C’s Presentation Mistakes (Part 2) — “The Technophile – I see you there messing around with your brand new MacBook Pro. You’ve got the A/V hook-up working, and you’re testing out the video. You even brought those portable speakers so that we hear the audio clearly. Good. I’m the last person to complain about a little tech stuff at the presentation. But why, why I ask you, must the video be longer than your explanation of why I’m supposed to care about it?”

Mustard First

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 –  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.