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 reaching [...]

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 [...]

When presentations go wrong and how to recover afterwards (OfficeRocker!) – “If any of you were at the Nottingham Technet event last week, you were a witness to probably the worst crash and burn I have ever suffered during a live presentation. I had put quite a lot of work into the presentation, believe [...]

My Apologies – Worst Presentation Ever – Elumenotion Blog – “I just got done with a Live Learning Web cast for AppDev on User Profiles and My Sites and it’s hard to imagine how it could possibly have been worse. … Thoroughly flustered and ashamed I managed to limp through the rest of the presentation [...]

Cringing and laughter. Good presentation disaster stories inspire one or the other. Really good presentation disaster stories inspire at least a little of both.
This story, from Ian Whitworth’s blog, Can You Hear Me Up the Back?, ping-pongs back and forth from one to the other so often I lost track and ended up laughing at [...]

A tad more embarrassing than your run-of-the-mill error and spell check never would have picked it up (you’ll need to click on the thumbnail to see the larger original on Twitpic — click on “View full size” once you get there).

…writing’s on the wall” (but make sure there are no bullet points and that you have a big dramatic photo you found on Flickr in the background. Why? I don’t know.).
[Editor's note: Olivia Mitchell has devised an incredibly interesting and ambitious group blogging project. She asked an army of  PowerPoint designers, speaking coaches and other [...]

Yeah, I know it’s kind of crass to whine and complain during the season of joy, but here are a few things I know a lot of meeting professionals wished Santa had managed to slip into his sack before flying south:

A magic coupon for free, fast, robust, ubiquitous Wi-Fi redeemable at any meeting venue.
A pamphlet [...]