If You Only Listen to One PowerPoint Tip…(Overnight Sensation) – “I did this once but had the good sense to save my file in an older file format just in case. When it loaded up, I was all excited – until I noticed that the system lacked the font I used and defaulted to different [...]

Don’t you hate when you see something like this happen. You know someone, somewhere had a really bad night. You can imagine the band’s management yelling into their cell phone as techs scramble to get systems rebooted or rolled over to backup while simultaneously updating their resume in their heads. There are hundreds of  hands [...]

Jackman – Can You Hear Us Now? (TMZ.com) – “Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig were trying to perform their play “A Steady Rain” Wednesday night in NYC — but some nitwit forgot to turn off his mobile phone. Jackman set the dude straight — staying in character all the while. Minutes later, the ring tone [...]

10 Things I taught my interns (The Hopkinson Report) – “If you’re doing a presentation, something will go wrong. … Even with modern advances, getting everything to work right is still very difficult. Every laptop has a different set of key commands to change from the laptop screen to the overhead monitor. There’s never the [...]

Conference nightmares. The many faces of scientific presentations (LabLit.com) – “Prof “Defeated by technology” provides good entertainment. … I remember well giving a talk at the Hammersmith Hospital in the early days of PowerPoint when, after loading the talk onto their computer, a message came up on the screen saying your talk is being modified [...]

This blog got its start because I’ve always been a sucker for a good story, especially a good story about a presentation gone bad. Given that, it’s not surprising that I”m really looking forward to when Scott Berkun’s Confessions of a Public Speaker hits the shelves. It sounds as if he’s going to be depending [...]