Breaking Murphy's Law » Pre-presentation

PowerPoint Ninja: “Emergency Preparedness for PowerPoint”

Lee Potts — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 01:20:39 +0000

Brent Dykes, The PowerPoint Ninja, strikes at the dark heart of a potential presentation disaster with this story of uncooperative hardware and a decidedly nonsupportive support person:

What I didn’t anticipate was that the presentation remote would only work with the desktop computer in the auditorium.

No problem. I had all of the presentations also loaded on to a USB flash drive so I could transfer the files on to the desktop. However, in its infinite wisdom, the university’s IT group blocked any files from being installed on the desktop including a font file that one of the teams needed. After explaining the situation to an IT “support” person, he indicated nothing could be done before our event started. Aaagggh. Luckily, someone had brought their own presentation remote so we could just run the presentations from my laptop.

Often it’s easier said than done “to be prepared”, but we often focus so much on the actual presentation itself and forget the other small technical details that can completely ruin our beautiful slides and well-rehearsed thoughts. In reflecting on this recent situation, I had several takeaways for presenters who want to be more prepared for PowerPoint emergencies…

Check out the full post for Brent’s outstanding suggestions for being prepared when things like this happen.

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"PowerPoint Ninja: “Emergency Preparedness for PowerPoint”" was originally posted on Breaking Murphy's Law on December 29, 2011. Copyright 2011 Lee Potts and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Like playing rugby…

Lee Potts — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:07:04 +0000

Kristi Casey Sanders noticed some parallels between the game of rugby and meeting planning. Many of the insights apply to presentation problems as well…

“You have to hit first,” he told me. “If you hit them before they hit you, you’ll never get hurt.”

In other words, if you’re prepared to attack a problem before it happens, you have an advantage. Meeting planners who think of everything that could go wrong long before the day of the event are better prepared to respond quickly to crisis. And you have to be prepared because anything can happen.

….

The random accidents that occur during the execution of events can be just as devastating. A friend told me about one convention at which one of her executive attendees jumped into a pool and died. At an association event I attended, more than 100 people came down with food poisoning.

The truth is, no matter how prepared you are for the unexpected, something will happen that you can’t foresee. But what doesn’t destroy you, makes you stronger, smarter and more prepared for next time.

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Tags: meeting planning, rugby

"Like playing rugby…" was originally posted on Breaking Murphy's Law on November 25, 2011. Copyright 2011 Lee Potts and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Alice’s Restaurant: Presentation technology failure circa 1965

Lee Potts — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 13:59:48 +0000

As seems to be the case nationwide, the local classic rock radio station has a long tradition of filling up its Thanksgiving playlist with the Arlo Guthrie’s brilliant, comic, 18 1/2 minute ode to hippie sensibilities, “Alice’s Restaurant“. Although I’ve listened many times over the years, it wasn’t until recently that I realized the song’s lyrics/monologue convey an important lesson about making sure your technology will work as expected before your presentation is due to begin.

We walked in, sat down, Obie came in with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, sat down. Man came in said, “All rise.” We all stood up, and Obie stood up with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures, and the judge walked in sat down with a seeing eye dog, and he sat down, we sat down. Obie looked at the seeing eye dog, and then at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog. And then at twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one and began to cry, ’cause Obie came to the realization that it was a typical case of American blind justice, and there wasn’t nothing he could do about it, and the judge wasn’t going to look at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. And we was fined $50 and had to pick up the garbage in the snow, but thats not what I came to tell you about.

If you haven’t already, do yourself a favor and listen to the entire song. The text alone, without the music and without Arlo’s dry, satiric delivery doesn’t do it justice.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Tags: alice's restaurant, Arlo Guthrie, technology failure, thanksgiving

"Alice’s Restaurant: Presentation technology failure circa 1965" was originally posted on Breaking Murphy's Law on November 24, 2011. Copyright 2011 Lee Potts and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Always, always show up early…

Lee Potts — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:59:09 +0000

Principle #6 states “If you’re not early, you’re late. A simple problem that would ordinarily not require anything more than time to fix can become a fatal error when the time isn’t available”.

John Richardson posted a great story on Success Begins Today that illustrates why it’s imperative that you arrive at the venue early enough to test every file and every piece of critical equipment.

I put on my suit jacket, grabbed my MacBook Pro, walked up to the smart podium, connected up the projector cable and waited for my first slide to come up on the screen.

It didn’t connect

I fumbled with the cables, tried different keystrokes, and it still didn’t connect.

I started to sweat, thinking about weeks of work going up in smoke. The audience was getting restless. Here I am, a technology guy, having problems with my Mac and a projector. Pictures of Steve Jobs popped into my mind. Apple products just work… except when you are in front of a restless audience.

Finally, I was just about to give up, when my screen flashed. My first slide popped on the screen, the lights dimmed and I was ready to go. I walked out in front of the podium, addressed the audience, and clicked the button on my Apple remote to advance to the next slide.

Nothing happened

….

What had been a smooth story in my mind at home was now a real problem. I glanced over at the podium, hoping to see my presenters view on my laptop which would quickly show me the next slide. Unfortunately, the podium had a large back edge which blocked my view. I was now on my own. 30 slides to go.

….

Now the remote didn’t work again. I became a contortionist and held the remote behind my back and tried to aim it at the podium without looking. Talk about out of kilter, I had to be a spectacle to my audience.

….

I could not believe all of the problems that I encountered. We were in a brand new classroom, at a state of the art junior college, with some of the latest projection technology. Yet everything went wrong.

The interesting thing was, the next five presenters all had problems too.

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Categories: Pre-presentation, Problems with Equipment, Problems with Software, Problems with Sound, Problems with Staging
Tags: early slides, MacBook Pro, projector, Time

"Always, always show up early…" was originally posted on Breaking Murphy's Law on November 23, 2011. Copyright 2011 Lee Potts and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Overheard on Twitter: Your nose is running…

Lee Potts — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:35:12 +0000

Sick enough for the symptoms to interfere with your presentation but snot nearly sick enough to call it off. What do you do when a cold hits you right in the eyes, nose and throat when you’re due to hit the stage? Do you have a favorite trick to dry things up just before you go on? Tough call. You should probably avoid most over the counter cold medicines and they tend to make folks loopy and you might end up completely lost and forget where you are in your talk. I guess the best thing to do is to avoid getting sick in the first place. It can be hard to not burn the candle at both ends those last few days before you present, but getting enough sleep and eating right can go a long way toward preventing all your hard work from going down the drain. Along with all that gunk the neti pot dislodged.

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Tags: cold, flu. sick, neti pot, remedy

"Overheard on Twitter: Your nose is running…" was originally posted on Breaking Murphy's Law on November 22, 2011. Copyright 2011 Lee Potts and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.