or “Lesson Learned by Watching Shaun of the Dead.” 1) Until the moment they suddenly become mindless, snarling, death-dealing horrors, a zombie (like whatever it was that caused your current presentation mishap) often appears about as threatening as your Mom. A projector with a burned out lamp looks like any other projector. A virus laden [...]

Tech rule #1: Keep the boss away from the buttons… Post to Delicious Post to Facebook

What’s remarkable is the way she recovered. Great example of grace under pressure. Had the the presence of mind to throw the broadcast over to the weather guy and seemed to be thinking ahead of the people behind the cameras and even the director. Even thought to reassure everyone she was okay in order to [...]

@GraemeLfx just remembered I’ve forgotten the parrot for my presentation. Disaster ~wardsteve (Steven Ward) Post to Delicious Post to Facebook

The Oops Factor (Two Well Read) – “It is a fact if you perform live, sooner or later you will meet with a genuine, bona fide onstage disaster. Generally, these seem to fall into two categories. The first is the self-made conflagration where lyrics evaporate into thin air, the high note that was there at [...]

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 [...]

MadTV — Drunk Powerpoint Presentation (Somewhat NSFW) Drunk Powerpoint Presentation Uploaded by Berserk_Gattsu – Wired Presentations — Sometimes a Mistake Pays Off All is well until a guy in the first row said, “my notes didn’t match what you were discussing.” Someone from the back chimed it, “Mine don’t match either.” Yep, Jeff had been [...]

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 [...]

Veteran AV pro Rick Pillars, (It’s a Rap Productions) sent in a great story: Once upon a time I supplied audio visual labor to clients both locally and from all over the nation. We had some interesting times. This one time we were setting up a pretty large show. The union labor that was supposed [...]

Another one of those situations where a good rehearsal would have helped… Thanks to Richard Garber of Joyful Public Speaking for the heads up. Post to Delicious Post to Facebook