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 [...]]]> 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 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/2008/11/25/turkey-days/ http://www.breakingmurphyslaw.com/2008/11/25/turkey-days/#comments Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:23:54 +0000 Lee Potts http://www.breakingmurphyslaw.com/?p=760 Do you expect to be attending any important business meetings in the United States this coming Thursday or Friday?

©iStockphoto.com/Suzifoo

I didn’t think so. It’s safe to say a that large percentage of my readers are expecting to spend this Thursday (Thanksgiving) through Sunday eating, drinking, shopping and hanging out with family and [...]]]> Do you expect to be attending any important business meetings in the United States this coming Thursday or Friday?

©iStockphoto.com/Suzifoo

I didn’t think so. It’s safe to say a that large percentage of my readers are expecting to spend this Thursday (Thanksgiving) through Sunday eating, drinking, shopping and hanging out with family and friends.

However, say you had absolutely no choice but to hold a meeting this Friday due to extremely desperate circumstances. Perhaps there is emergent fallout from a worldwide economic crisis that has to be dealt with immediately. Unfortunately, this situation isn’t as unusual as it once was.

Needless to say, it’s not out of the question that a meeting could take place over the Thanksgiving holiday. BUT, you can be absolutely certain that an experienced meeting planner will take the date into account and will make special plans to ensure things go smoothly. For instance, chartered flights might be used rather than commercial airlines. Special arrangements might need to be made for accommodations due to all local hotels being booked solid. Arrangements that would ordinarily be considered routine and low risk might need to have several levels of backup just to be certain everyone is where they need to be when they need to be there.

What about other dates that are equally disruptive but aren’t as well know as Thanksgiving? For instance local holidays or events.

I was once involved with preparing a presentation for a major meeting mandated by a federal agency that just happened to be slated to take place in early Spring in Washington, DC. Imagine our surprise when we discover that it was virtually impossible to find enough hotel rooms for our entire team. It turns out our meeting was taking place right in the middle of a little local event know as the National Cherry Blossom Festival.

“More than 700,000 people visit Washington each year to admire the blossoming cherry trees that herald the beginning of spring in the nation’s capital.”

We ended up staying in the far suburbs at a non-preferred hotel and had to make special arrangements to be sure we all got to the actual venue on time for the meeting. If I remember correctly, these arrangements included a very early morning departure and a massively unpopular boxed breakfast on the bus. Overall the meeting was a success but I can’t say for sure that we arrived primed to reach peak performance levels.

We saw the cherry blossoms through the bus windows on the way into and out of town and, believe it or not, we found them less than charming.

Just to be on the safe side, if you are planning a big meeting or giving a high-stakes presentation, check well in advance to see if there are any local “turkey days” that might have an impact on you calendar decisions, travel arrangements or the way you prepare to present. This is especially important if you will be depending on local resources to help create presentation materials or if you need a lot of hotel rooms.

Hope you all have a great holiday. I’ll be back on Sunday with this week’s Might Have Missed List. The only venue-related planning I’m going to be doing this week is figuring out how to claim the comfiest chair in my sister’s living room after doing serious damage to a turkey day dinner.

Related resource:

HotelChatter — Stranded at the Airport Over Thanksgiving? Check-In At These Hotels

Your turn:

Are there any local events or holidays where you are located that might have an negative impact on a meeting or on someone’s ability to present that aren’t well know outside of the immeadiate area? Have you ever fell victim to one of these local events or holidays? Have you ever seen the cherry blossoms in DC?

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Categories: Pre-presentation, Problems with People, Problems with Transportation, Problems with Venue
Tags: emergency meetings, holiday travel, holidays, National Cherry Blossom Festival, thanksgiving

"Turkey Days" was originally posted on Breaking Murphy's Law on November 25, 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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