A couple weeks ago, when I posted “The Seven Principles of Presentation Disaster Avoidance (Version 0.1 beta)” I knew two things right off the bat (even before all the great reader feedback I received):

The title of the post didn’t do it justice. It was lame. Flat. It used the word “avoidance” for God’s sake. I’ve [...]

1.
If you can’t do without it,
make sure you won’t have to.
Have backups of your slide files, have backup for your critical equipment, have backups for your people. Have backups.

2.
Any rational response to
“What’s the worse that can happen?”
is most likely wrong.
This is mainly due to the fact that the things that can go wrong are not [...]

1) You weren’t particularly careful about your pre-presentation meal choices. Washing down the street vendor’s Khlav Kalash with Crab Juice might not have been the best idea you’ve had recently.
2) Your time is too valuable to fly in the night before your presentation. “Leaving early in the morning will be fine. Two hours is plenty [...]

As a male, morning sickness is one potential presentation problem I never had to deal with on a personal level (unless you count being vicariously acquainted with it in the way only the father of three can be). As far as I know, none of the speakers I worked with were contending with it while [...]

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 [...]

Nicholas Bate is, among other things, a successful author and business consultant.  A recent post on his blog not only offered a useful and refreshingly pragmatic pre-meeting checklist, it also dovetailed nicely with a recent post of my own. Nicolas and I both strongly feel that it’s crucial to arrive at the presentation venue early [...]

I’ve been blessed with both a pessimistic nature and a vivid imagination so it’s not surprising that I consider the creating and updating of contingency plans one of the best parts of my job.
Trying to anticipate everything that can possibly go wrong during any part of the presentation process is pretty standard stuff in our [...]

“If you’re early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late. If you’re late, you’re replaced.”
Every boss I’ve had since I got into the business considered call time to be holy writ. As in (imagine a big, echoing, Monty Python-esque voice of God) “Thou Shall NOT Be Late For Call Time!” Especially on show [...]

Rusty: You scared?
Linus: You suicidal?
Rusty: Only in the morning.
(Ocean’s Eleven)
Sometimes, the thing that is going to go wrong with your presentation actually starts going wrong long before you step up to the lectern. Sometimes, a disaster is sneaking up on you while your sleeping the night away in tranquil ignorance. If you’re lucky, you have [...]

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 [...]