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 the same time I was cringing. Usually, when sharing a story that’s already been published online, I post the standard excerpt/link combination. In the case of this particular story, so many things went wrong in so many funny and cringe-worthy ways I had trouble choosing which excerpts to use. Luckily, Ian was kind enough to give me permission to publish it in its entirety. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

The Worst Presentation of My Life

Someone showed me another Steve Ballmer stage moment, in which the big guy cavorts in the sweatiest shirt since Elvis played Hawaii.

Watching it gave me terrible flashbacks to an incident long ago, and prompts the question: what’s the worst presentation you’ve ever done?

We’ve all had them. The speeches where you just want to flee the stage, run to the car park, drive until you’re deep in the forest, and stay there for the rest of your life, living off beetles and wood fungus, safe in the knowledge you’ll never run into anyone who was in the audience that day.

Mine was a speech at an interstate product launch. The day started with preparations for a pre-dawn flight. Stumbling around in the dark I forgot, for the very first time in my business life, to put on deodorant.

Sitting on the plane, I thought: hey, how bad can this be? Maybe deodorant isn’t really necessary, just one of those things that the international hygiene marketing conspiracy has thrust upon us in the last hundred years. After all, the term ‘B.O’ was coined by an ad writer just like me, creating a problem that hadn’t previously existed, to sell more Lifebuoy soap.

Mister Overconfidence Comes To Town

I got to my destination – hmm, warm weather here – and went to the venue for a rehearsal. I’d had a run of good presentations in the previous month, and was full of misplaced, up-and-coming-executive overconfidence. I figured I’d be able to wing it with the new material.

Show time. I stepped up to the lectern with my written notes. The house lights went down to black, for this was the era of weak projectors, and the lectern spotlights arced up. The reading lamp on the lectern? Not there. I couldn’t read a bloody thing.

The armpits went into peak flow. Twin tsunamis of clammy sweat fanned out across my nicely pressed shirt. My mouth filled with some sort of internally-generated tongue anaesthetic. I stared at the audience. They stared at me.

Quick, tell them a story, I thought. I launched into an anecdote. A tried and true, ‘break glass in case of emergency’ story that had never failed to get things off to a good start in other cities.

But I wasn’t in those cities, was I?

You’re Not From Round Here, Are You Boy?

Since then, years of experience has taught me that this is the town where humor goes to die. They hate any attempts at levity. You know the Chinese entombed soldiers that tour the museums of the world? That’s what the audience felt like. Neat rows as far as the eye could see, still, cold, stony. All eyes fixed on a point somewhere on the wall behind you.

Solid gold, guaranteed audience pleasing stories sailed past them untouched and went ‘splat’ against the back wall. I soldiered on, knowing that at least I had a big video finale. A pre-shot interactive thing where I appeared on the screen looking down at the lectern, so I could have a conversation with a less-sweaty version of myself. That would pull the whole show together.

Too Tricky For My Own Good

Or would have, had the under-rehearsed AV guy not started the tape in completely the wrong place, leaving me delivering lines that made no sense whatsoever, like some piece of abstract performance art.

Did I mention that this was a presentation on how to do better presentations?

Any questions? No, just a deep-space vacuum silence.  They’d moved from indifference to outright hatred.

Following me was a presenter from a competitor company, a local guy. He made a few unsubtle jibes about out-of-towners coming in and thinking they could teach the locals a thing or two. Let me assure you, the audience lapped that up.

Internal and External Drowning of Sorrows

Drinking the pain away at a nearby restaurant before the flight home, I heard the sound of sliding shoe leather and ominous clinking. I turned to face the stumbling waitress as she tipped a full tray of beers all over me.

People on the flight home quietly asked to be moved to another seat, rather than sit near the crazy-looking man in the window seat, his suit reeking of BO and beer.

“Mummy, does that man have a mental illness?”

Lessons From All This

1. You need a major presentation trauma every so often to remind you to be better prepared.
2. Deodorant is not a consumerism conspiracy, it is a miracle product and we should give thanks for its existence.
3. No one died. Even when your worst fears become reality, it’ll all blow over and nobody will remember it except you.

Ian’s story is a great illustration of the first two Principles:

1. If you can’t do without it, make sure you won’t have to. (This usually applies to things like projectors and PowerPoint files, not personal hygiene products.)
2. Any rational response to “What’s the worse that can happen?” is most likely wrong.

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Categories: Guest Spots, Post-presentation, Pre-presentation, Problems with Content, Problems with Equipment, Problems with Light, Problems with People, Problems with Software, Problems with Sound, Problems with Staging, Problems with Time, Problems with Transportation, Problems with Venue, Problems with Wardrobe
Tags: conspiracy, dawn flight, deodorant, hygiene, Ian Whitworth, laughter, Nervousness, overconfidence, steve ballmer

"Ian Whitworth: The Worst Presentation of My Life" was originally posted on Breaking Murphy's Law on September 25, 2009. Copyright 2009 Lee Potts and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

]]> http://www.breakingmurphyslaw.com/2009/09/25/ian-whitworth-the-worst-presentation-of-my-life/feed/ 1 http://www.breakingmurphyslaw.com/2009/06/28/the-weekly-might-have-missed-list-062809/ http://www.breakingmurphyslaw.com/2009/06/28/the-weekly-might-have-missed-list-062809/#comments Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:01:55 +0000 Lee Potts http://www.breakingmurphyslaw.com/?p=1429 Theater Loop — ‘Mary Poppins’ breaks down in Chicago; Nanny stuck in no-fly zone

A computer central to the new touring production of Disney’s “Mary Poppins” malfunctioned about 15 minutes into Saturday night’s Chicago performance at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, causing the entire show to be shut down and the frustrated audience sent home.

[A couple of the article's comments seem to focus on the fact that there should have been a backup system in place. Brings to mind BML Principle #1: If you can’t do without it, make sure you won’t have to.]

Speak Schmeak — How to aggravate your audience

Audience members became more and more agitated, yelling out, “We can’t hear you!” and “Louder!” It didn’t seem like the officials even understood what was going on. A sound person would periodically run up on stage and fiddle with the sound system, then go back and sit down, but nothing changed.

Control Geek — Virus Check Fail

Chapter 4 of my book is System Design Principles and one of the things I talk about in that chapter is the impact of virus checkers on the computers we use for live shows.  And here’s why…

Open Loops — Presentation Mistakes: The View From the Audience

Know how to work your equipment – Don’t turn off your own digital projector in the middle of your presentation due to your own incompetence.

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Categories: Might Have Missed List, Problems with Equipment, Problems with Sound, Problems with Staging
Tags: Chicago, Control Geek, disney, Mary Poppins, Open Loops, Sound, Speak Schmeak, Theater Loop, Virus check

"The Weekly Might Have Missed List (06/28/09)" was originally posted on Breaking Murphy's Law on June 28, 2009. Copyright 2009 Lee Potts and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

]]> http://www.breakingmurphyslaw.com/2009/06/28/the-weekly-might-have-missed-list-062809/feed/ 0 http://www.breakingmurphyslaw.com/2008/12/26/what-i-wish-santa-had-left-under-the-tree/ http://www.breakingmurphyslaw.com/2008/12/26/what-i-wish-santa-had-left-under-the-tree/#comments Sat, 27 Dec 2008 03:00:42 +0000 Lee Potts http://www.breakingmurphyslaw.com/?p=985 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 to give to new clients that politely explains everything wrong with this request: “Can you just take a couple minutes to fix up my slides. Nothing fancy, just make them pretty.”
• A laser pointer with built in vibration damping so the audience can’t see when a nervous speaker’s hand is shaking.
• A project that, for some mysterious reason, requires the use of 35mm slides rather than digital files to remind us how much easier things are now.
• Gaffer tape that sticks perfectly to all hotel ballroom carpet but will never stick to itself and get permanently attached to your cables.
• A device that will automatically turn off all Blackberries in the meeting room so the sound system won’t be afflicted by the “Blackberry Buzz.” It might as well switch all the other cellphones to vibrate while it’s at it.
• A special alarm clock that one person can set that guarantees everyone on the crew will wake up on time for call and won’t get screwed over by hotel wake up calls that are requested but never made or by hotel alarm clocks that seem designed to be set incorrectly.

And the one I was really hoping for:

A magic spell powerful enough to counter the “Death by PowerPoint/PowerPoint Sucks” spell that just about everyone seems to be enthralled by these days. It’s not the program folks, it’s the people using it. Even a Stradivarius is going to sound lousy if it’s played by someone who has no business being on stage. Of course PowerPoint makes bad slides when the user lacks even a basic understanding of good graphic design practices. Of course presentations that use PowerPoint are going to be boring if the speaker doesn’t know how to speak. PowerPoint is only culpable for making people who don’t have the requisite presenting and/or design skills think that they do.

Your turn:

I’m sure there are a lot of great gift ideas I didn’t mention. What do you wish Santa left sitting under the tree that would make your professional life a lot easier?

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"What we wish Santa had left under the tree…" was originally posted on Breaking Murphy's Law on December 26, 2008. Copyright 2008 Lee Potts and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

]]> http://www.breakingmurphyslaw.com/2008/12/26/what-i-wish-santa-had-left-under-the-tree/feed/ 3 http://www.breakingmurphyslaw.com/2008/11/05/toshiba-tlp-x200u-watch-your-mouth/ http://www.breakingmurphyslaw.com/2008/11/05/toshiba-tlp-x200u-watch-your-mouth/#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 06:34:55 +0000 Lee Potts http://www.breakingmurphyslaw.com/?p=621 The Projector Blog recently reported on the first projector with a voice.

The Voice Guidance feature provides ease of use, preventative maintenance updates and a lower total cost of ownership. The voice guidance system in the TLP-X200U directs users with an audible message through the projector’s operating instructions and system warnings, such as the on/off status, lamp life, air filter checks, and cooling fan status.

They were not impressed. I agree with their assessment that it’s overpriced for it’s specs and the the voice guidance feature is, as they put it, “less than useful.” What I really want to know, however, is how much control do you have over when the projector chooses to speak up? Obviously it will need to be powered up to offer voice guidance, but most of the time I have the projector on, I want it sitting there very quietly, not calling attention to itself, not chiming in while the speaker is making a crucial point.

Has anyone out there had a chance to demo this projector? If so, please fill in some of the details for us.

Unexpected things projectors will be heard saying in the future:

• “Hey Butthead!!! Yeah, you at the lectern. Time to change my filter.”
• “You never take me anywhere nice anymore.”
• “Sorry, I just can’t stay focused today.”
• “Poor Uncle Sony, they said it was death by PowerPoint.”
• “Stop pushing my buttons!”

If your projector could talk, what would it say to you at a most inopportune time?

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Categories: Problems with Equipment, Problems with Sound
Tags: projector, TLP-X200U, Toshiba, voice guidance

"Toshiba TLP-X200U: Watch your mouth…" was originally posted on Breaking Murphy's Law on November 05, 2008. Copyright 2008 Lee Potts and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

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