Murphy's Law states: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." This is especially true and especially painful when there is an audience involved.
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 ©iStockphoto.com/kreicher “Break a leg” is a well-known saying in theatre which means “good luck”. It is typically said to actors before they go out onto stage to perform. The expression reflects a theatrical superstition in which wishing a person “good luck” is considered bad luck. The expression is sometimes used outside the theatre as superstitions and customs travel through other professions and then into common use.
~Wikipedia
At a previous job, we had a roll of toilet paper, affectionately known as “Buttwipe,” that was thrown into the box with the rest of the art department’s supplies and shipped to every meeting we worked. The consequences of not performing this act of raw superstition, though unspecified, were too too horrible to consider.
Over the years, Buttwipe (now there’s a word I never thought I would find myself typing) suffered from severe travel fatigue and required a series of shipping tape grafts in order to continue keeping it all together while performing his crucial on-site duties. As that particular art department is no longer in existence, Buttwipe is now quietly retired and living in a closet, preferring to stay close at home after a being on the road for much of his long, globe-trotting career.
Although they are basically irrational, superstitions can actually serve useful purposes. They can foster a sense of normalcy in chaotic, uncertain situations and can provide the illusion that there is some small modicum of control in an otherwise uncontrollable environment. They can also build team cohesion and esprit de corps. I have in mind something like Gene Kranz’s white vest in Apollo 13.
FIDO Gold: Looks like Mrs. Kranz pulled out the ol’ needle and thread again…
Technician: Last one looked like he bought it off a gypsy.
FIDO Gold: Well I guess you can’t argue with tradition.
Technician: [Gene puts on a flight vest with an Apollo 13 patch on it, everyone begins applauding] Hey Gene, I guess we can go now!
Gene Kranz: Save it for splashdown fellas…
What superstitions do you or your colleagues invoke in order to ensure disaster doesn’t strike your meeting or presentation? Does it involve wearing a specific article of clothing? Do you need to have a particular type of coffee or eat a certain breakfast the morning of the meeting? Is it something a little more bizarre? Please share it with us in a comment.
FAILBlog:
Backstage at BackstageJobs.com: Props are important. Screw them up, and someone could die — “An actor at the Vienna National Theatre slit his own throat in front of a packed house when the fake prop knife he was supposed to have was accidentally switched for a real knife.”
Face2face: Teleprompter problems — “I know the new coolio teleprompters that are clear and posed on either side of the speaker are all the rage these days, but at IAEE’s opening session last night I felt kind of bad for the speakers, most of whom looked like they were trying to keep up with a tennis match, their heads sproinging wildly from side to side.”
Pivotal Public Speaking: Video – Guy Kawasaki – The Art of the Start — “How would you have handled the time problem?”
Overnight Sensation: 10 Reasons Why Someone Might Walk Out of Your Presentation — “It’s every speaker’s nightmare: you’re delivering a speech and someone (or more than one person) gets up and walks out.”
My Toastmasters Blog: Public Speaking Trap – Worrying About Bombing — “If you are speaking to groups of people, at some point you are going to bomb. No matter how good you are, sometimes there are situations out of your control that are going to cause you to mess up, not connect, and lose your audience’s attention.”
Payal: Overcome presentation gaffes with panache — “A gaffe is only as bad as you make it to be. The first step is to accept the fact that things can and will go awry – the computer may hang up, the microphone may disconnect or you may become paralysed with fear. Reconciling with this reality and thinking on your feet will stand you in good stead for setting things right again.”
Dave Paradi’s PowerPoint Blog: The danger of gradient fills — “What this presenter did was to fill every shape with a gradient fill that moved from black at the top to white in the middle and back to black at the bottom. Then he put text in the shape. Of course it was impossible to select a text color that had enough contrast with both the black and the white background, so most of the text was almost impossible to see.”
Slide that stick: Preserving custom fonts when presenting away from your own computer — “One problem, custom fonts are a disaster when used on a machine that is not yours. And you discover it when you click through slide 2 of your presentation in front of a live audience…”
Linda Seid Frembes: Making the case for compelling content — “Yes, the projector could have been brighter, the screen larger, and the audio system more powerful, but his presentation would have been just as compelling if we had suffered a power outage and he needed to present with just a handful of postcards and a flashlight. Why?”
PowerPoint Ninja: Content Staging: Propel Your Slide Content Higher — “When you’re presenting your slide content, the last thing you want to do is overwhelm your audience with too much information on any one slide.”
Execupundit.com: Imagining Disaster — “Some executives and groups have serious difficulty imagining how things can go wrong. They rose, in many cases, by accentuating the positive and by having ‘can do’ attitudes. Caution can be too easily dismissed as fearfulness. What is later regarded as reckless was once disguised as bravery.”
The Technium: Movage — “Digital continuity is a real problem. Digital information is very easy to copy within short periods of time, but very difficult to copy over long periods of time. That is, it is very easy to make lots of copies now, but very difficult to get the data to copy over a century.”
You know the guy* I mean.
The guy who…
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 ©iStockphoto.com/theprint insists on making multiple, tweaky, obviously non-essential slide changes minutes before going on (this behavior is very much akin to the way he treats waiters in order to provide evidence of his place in the pecking order).
- loses temper in an extremely unprofessional way when these unimportant, last minute, “emergency” changes weren’t done right and are projected during his presentation.
- loses temper in an extremely unprofessional way when something important gets screwed up because of unimportant, last minute, “emergency” changes (i.e., slides in wrong order, old slide not deleted).
- points out screw up caused by making unimportant, last minute, “emergency” changes to the entire audience and announces, “I don’t know what happened, I guess the AV guys messed up.”
- comes to the meeting with non-PC and/or non-PPT slides files without letting anyone know in advance.
- loves unusual, nonstandard fonts, but never bring the font files with him and always forgets where he found them.
- wanders off with the lavalier mic so the sound guy has to chase him down through the post-meeting crowd, out to the lobby (or in one case, outside to the limo), to retrieve it.
- shows up at the ballroom the night before the meeting for the final slide review, slightly drunk, very late and more interested in socializing with the other speakers than in rehearsing or finalizing his slides with the graphics tech.
[Disclaimer: the above traits either belong to someone described in a story told to me be a friend in the business or are composite descriptions derived from experiences I had a long time ago in a previous professional life.]
I’m sure everyone has their own list of behaviors particular to the version of That Guy they have most often been exposed to. I mentioned the topic of an earlier version of this post to Ellen Finkelstein and she sent along a few items sure to tick off any AV crew:
- Forget to tell them you’re using a Mac
- Forget to tell them that the presentation was created on a Mac, but you’re showing it on a PC, and you’ve never tried it out on your PC
- Forget to tell them that your presentation has a movie with sound
- Forget to tell them that in the middle of the presentation, you want to go to YouTube and show the audience a video, so you need a live Internet connection
- Forget to tell them that your going to ask for audience participation, so you need a couple of microphones in the audience area
- Forget to tell them that you like to walk around the audience while you speak, so you need a wireless lapel mic
- Forget to tell them that your laptop doesn’t reliably work with projectors because Dell stopped selling the model and doesn’t support it any more and you upgraded it to Windows Vista and so there’s no updated graphics driver (Yes, that’s me!)
It’s important to recognize that That Guy isn’t always a presenter, as blogger and AV tech “the urban cowboy” can testify:
i’ve worked as an AV tech for a good while now and it can be a long, hard, thankless slog. i’ve thought nothing of a 70 hour week, or a two-day rig that’s been changed at the last minute.
or a client turning up and knowing your job better than you do, even though it’s their first ever live event.
or making a speaker cable out of a 4-way because some idiot didn’t put enough in the cable trunk.
or getting the blame for a microphone not working, and it turns out someone in the audience has turned it off.
or rigging an event one day, turning up the next day to run it and finding one of the cleaners has stolen the projector.
…
or camera-men falling asleep.
or finding that a crew-member has plugged the entire video/graphics rig, satellite feed and the comms system into one 13-amp socket.
…. i could go on…
There are two reasons not to be That Guy.
First, That Guy tends to scatter a trail of presentation mishaps, difficulties and disasters behind them as they go from meeting to event to conference.
Second, That Guy is least likely to inspire the support team to go to heroic lengths to save the day when things go very, very badly.
 It’s a perfect example of instant karma. The person most likely to need help from others is also the person least likely to have predisposed those around him to offer more than the minimal amount of assistance necessary to keep the disaster from overtaking the entire project and everyone else involved.
Please don’t misunderstand what I’m getting at. I have yet to meet an AV professional who would screw up a meeting or a presentation on purpose. But I do know that there are people you will be dependent on, people you need to be proactive in preventing problems and who need to be performing to the best of their abilities when things go terrible wrong. Make sure you’re the guy who does everything possible to develop a good working relationship with these these folks.
* For some reason, in my mind’s eye, this sort of person is always a guy.
Your Turn:
What are some of the karma killing behaviors you noticed when you’ve been lucky enough to work with That Guy? Do you suspect you might be That Guy? Has you ever worked with That Gal? Please share your thoghts as a comment to this post.
 Empower Your Point: Context matters : Avoid turkey slaughter in the background — “While watching, it was very hard to focus on her : I totally missed the meaning of her interview. All I actually saw was this crazy man with his poor turkeys… I would much rather be an average presenter in an excellent context ( interested audience, computers working fine, etc.), than an excellent presenter in a horrible context ( say for instance with a turkey killer in my back)! Don’t get me wrong : Context is no excuse. It is your responsibility to make sure that everything is going to be fine.”
Corporate Presenter: Presenting on Television — “Even rehearsing your lines until you are blue in the face won’t always help you getting it right to camera.”
controlbooth.com: crappy cd player/bad cd??? — “So we’re up here in the booth, and randomly during an explosion cue, the cd player jumped tracks to curtain call music!! Nobody was touching the thing, and the sound consultant behind me said “that wasn’t you, it jumped a track”. Wtf????”
The Next Meeting: Virtual or Otherwise, You Need to Prepare for Meetings — “Let’s face it, the new technology available for virtual meetings, while exciting, isn’t quite perfect. You need to make some allowances for that. If you’ll be making a presentation, it’s really important to practise it ahead of time. Make sure it’s as clear as it can possibly be. You may not have the benefit of your colleagues’ blank stares to tell you they don’t understand you, so you won’t be able to adjust on the fly.” Other good ideas.
Humor Power: When Humor Mis-Fires (Part Three) — “It had never occurred to me that this joke could mis-fire. It got a good laugh, but as soon as I returned to my seat, I had second thoughts about using the line.”
Great Speaking Coach: Avoid Q&A Traps — “When you invite questions at the end of your presentation you run a substantial risk that one question derails the point of your whole presentation–and then you can’t recover your own momentum.”
Great Public Speaking: THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE — “I’m talking about the dreaded MICROPHONE BULGE. Unless you use a handheld microphone, or a wired clip on microphone (which causes you to trip over the wire all day) in one way or the other you have to deal with a wireless transmitter bulge in your clothing.
This needs to be addressed when you are purchasing the clothing you plan on wearing when you speak. … Sometimes I put the transmitter right in my pants pocket. That way there is no way it will fall off or come unclipped even if I get a little boisterous on stage.”
ChrisMoncus.com: How to Properly Wrap a Cable (the Over and Under Roadie Wrap) — Rolling up your cables (especially the one connecting your laptop to the projector) and storing them the right way helps to prevent them from failing when it might be more than a little inconvenient.
Hotel Chatter: You’d Better Find a Couch to Sleep on for Inauguration — Hope you’re not trying to do any regular business in DC around the 20th of January. Posted about this sort of thing a week or so ago.
PowerPoint Ninja: 13 Ways to Quickly Derail a PowerPoint Presentation — Part I — Starts with something dear to our hearts here at BML – “Technical difficulties: You and your audience are ready, but why aren’t the slides appearing or why isn’t the audio working? Delays caused by technical problems can cause you to quickly lose and never reclaim an audience. Leave nothing to chance.”
Just for fun:
Six Minutes: Gifts Public Speakers Really Want: Dozens of Christmas Ideas
Fortify Your Oasis: Weekend treat for Road Warriors — “As someone who has spent far too many nights in far too many hotel rooms around the world, these words of John Cleese’s have an all-too-familiar ring to them. Come to think of it, it sounds like I’ve stayed in some of these hotels.” (Video)
(Sorry, I don’t want to get carried away with this sort of thing, but you know how it is.)
Author, blogger, business consultant and all around great guy Nicholas Bate was kind enough to name Breaking Murphys Law one of his blogs of the year for 2008.
“‘Best Mainstream Topic Handled Differently Blog’ of 2008. There must a billion blogs on presentation skills. But Breaking Murphy’s Law does it differently. A great blog.”
Thank you for your kind words. And thank you for including me such a high-powered group of bloggers (Execupundit, Cultural Offering and Eclecticity). So much for my plan to “phone it in” over the holidays.
Just as I was beginning to get a little tired of reading my own stories here on BML, reader Bedd Gelert left a comment on a previous post that was begging to be front page material (BTW, I’m fairly certain that “Bedd Gelert” is a pseudonym):
 Okay, technically this isn’t a ‘presentation’ disaster, but because it concerns a PC and a meeting where having it functioning was pretty well essential I will mention it…
I was pretty stressed, as I had to take details, onto a spreadsheet, of the issues on literally dozens of different items we were dealing with, on a Red / Amber / Green basis, with half a dozen people in the room and someone from IT, who had all this information, at the end of a phone line.
The computer wouldn’t work, as I couldn’t ‘sign in’ to it. I got more and more irate, as it kept rejecting my password. In the end I took to it to another room, got on the phone to PC Support and [there is no way I can shy away from this, and I’m not proud, but one has to tell the truth however ashamed I am … ] I went ballistic. ‘Why isn’t this pc working – I am about to go into a 2 hour meeting and I need this to be working NOW – Why isn’t it??’
Cue more weeping, wailing and a temper tantrum with PC support all to no avail. Of course, machines know when you are stressed and unreasonable and responding in the way I did. So I failed to get the PC working and had to resort to somebody else having to take over my role with their PC.
PROBLEM – I had inadvertently pressed a ‘Function’ key on the PC, which converted 9 keys on the right hand side of the keyboard into a ‘number pad’.
When I keyed in my ‘ID’ I used the numbers at the top of the keyboard.
But when I keyed in my ‘password’ I used the letter keys on the keyboard, some of which were being substituted by numbers – and there was no way I would realise this as the password is clearly only shown as dots when keyed.
MORAL – I could have been there for hours and not figured this out – but I had a fighting chance to do it quickly if I hadn’t lost my rag. And PC support would have had a small chance of sorting this out in a couple of minutes if I’d been courteous with them. But because this was a 1-in-a-100 problem, as soon as I got flustered and panicked I was done for.
Easy to say in hindsight, and in ‘cold blood’, but as we are always told ‘It’s nice to be important, but even more important to be nice..’ We live and we learn..
A long time ago, but still able to give me nightmares..
Bedd’s experience echos my earlier post about the staying in the Valium bubble. No matter how badly things are going, anything other than a calm, measured response is going to make the situation more difficult to resolve. Any losing of one’s rag needs to be saved for after the presentation is over.
Seems like something that will need to be added to The Principles. Just need to come up with a pithy phrase to describe it. How’s this sound: “Letting it loose might mean losing it all”? Yeah, I thought so. That’s just off the top of my head. It might be better to keep thinking about it.
Thanks Bedd, I really appreciate you taking the time to share this obviously painful memory. It serves as a great reminder to all of us who are dropped into these sorts of situations on a daily basis.
Your Turn:
Do you have a better idea than “Letting it loose might mean losing it all”? Have things ever gone from bad to much worse due to your losing it during a presentation or while preparing for one?
Virtual Meeting Success: Disaster Preparedness for Teleconference Nightmares — “At first people thought it was static. But, they soon realized that one of the participants was snoring. And everyone heard it! The snoozing participant had forgotten to turn on his mute button. There was nothing to do but ride it out. Sound familiar? Well, I would have thought it couldn’t get worse. But it does.”
 ©iStockphoto.com/anthonyjhall So You Want To Be a Banquet Manager…: Wadda Mean It’s Raining in The Meeting Room? — “Just then someone bellows over the radio, “It’s raining in the meeting room”! “Hurry up, call Engineering”! Well there goes my perfect day. Now you’re racing to find every bucket, bus-tub, unused Lexan and garbage can, to catch the water racing out of the broken pipe from the room upstairs. Son of a b@>\#!. We try to dry the special notebook binders that the group contact spent 2 hours last night putting at each placesetting. We change the flipchart pads ’cause the’re a mess.” (I’ve had burst pipe problems at two meeting at two different venues. It’s a hard thing to prepare for but you need to have some sort of contingency plans for it.)
Humor Power: When Humor Mis-Fires (Part One) and (Part Two) — “Molly laughed. The rest of the audience didn’t. I instantly realized that the audience didn’t understand the closeness between us. They also didn’t know that Molly appreciated the humor. At that point, I completely lost them. But it wasn’t their fault. It was mine. I should have known better. Have you ever said something stupid in your presentation? Wow! As soon as the audience reacted, I knew I had messed up! I explained the background behind my comment, and then moved on.”
portfolio.com: Making Magic: “Steve Cohen, the ‘Millionaire’s Magician,’ shares some tips for winning over a well-heeled audience, including why you should never wing it and the importance of having backup plans.” For instance: “‘It’s essential to have backup plans—not just one, but several,’ says Cohen. ‘The key is to know all the things that could possibly go wrong.'” I like the way this guy thinks. Thanks for the heads to Olivia from Speaking about Presenting.
Musings: Crisis Management — “The first few hours/minutes/moments are the most crucial and most of us lose that in panic. Instead of thinking of the possibilities we start thinking of consequences, which really is no help at this juncture.”
projo.com: Workplace etiquette — “What do you do about a constant interrupter? I’ve run into this situation in meetings, conference calls, etc. I can’t really say if the interrupter is being rude or just antsy. I find it to be extremely irritating, and it throws off my concentration, especially if I’m giving a presentation.”
CIO: How To Get the Best Internet Connectivity While You Travel — “One business travel irritation is that it interferes with getting work done. If you have to give a presentation in New York tonight, and you need to create the PowerPoint presentation before you arrive, the problem isn’t as much the time spent enroute than how much you can accomplish on the trip.”
Acronym: Remote Troubleshooting — “We’ve all experienced technical difficulty with our computers at some point and some of us have had the opportunity to experience remote assistance. In my case, while offsite, I called my company’s IT department and requested assistance.”
Indezine: Cross Platform PowerPoint — “Cross-platform hiccups happen for more than one reason – it’s not unusual for the same company to have both Windows and Mac machines, or there might be a requirement to create an important presentation that needs to be compatible with whatever platform a client has. It might be that the designer hired to create a presentation or a template might use a Mac when the presenter is using a Windows machine – or even vice versa. Regardless, the differences between the Windows and Mac versions of PowerPoint have been giving presenters a fair share of problems.”
The Producer’s Perspective: We go to theatre to see if someone will #$&@ up — “Wigs falling off, technical screw-ups, and so on, are all things Producers spend millions trying to avoid, but ironically, audiences treasure them . . . and talk about them.”
 Brent Dykes, PowerPoint Ninja, was kind enough to add Breaking Murphy’s Law to his collection of presentation and PowerPoint resources:
There are many blogs that touch upon these subjects, but only a subset of them are compelling and insightful.
* Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen blog
* Jan Schultink’s Slides that Stick blog
* Lee Potts’ Breaking Murphy’s Law blog
* Geetesh Bajaj’s A PowerPoint Blog
Being mentioned in any group that includes Garr, Jan and Geetesh is pretty cool in and of itself, but being described as “compelling and insightful” by a professional of Brent’s caliber is far more than I ever expected. Thanks!
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?
We have a ton of really great links this week. Enjoy!
 a shel of my former self: Connecting to the Net in 1992 — Great story from the bad old days. “We found the AV tech and explained that we had requested a direct line. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘and that’s how you get a direct line.’ Patiently, Craig explained how a modem works. He unfolded the contract and pointed to the section that listed the requirement. Then he said (and I can still hear it today, 16 years later), ‘Over 100 people will arrive here in 45 minutes expecting to see an online demonstration that we can’t deliver without a direct line. And at Lexis-Nexis, we have two floors of lawyers with nothing much to do who would love to to make your life miserable over this.’
Dave Paradi’s PowerPoint Blog: Plan what happens before and after your presentation — “The projector wasn’t needed the whole time, just for this one part. And when that part was over, it would not be needed again. Unfortunately, the people running the meeting didn’t plan what to do before or after the projector was used. They left the edit view of PowerPoint on before the slides were used and returned to the edit view after they were done. What could they have done better?”
Danny Thorpe, Architect of Disruption: Mashup Camp, Day 1 — “To make matters worse, the presenter had to talk his way around a number of technical difficulties, including (but not limited to): [ed. note: go to post to see list of technical difficulties]. All of that in 25 minutes. It’s a reassuring to know that even Google can have “those†kinds of demo days.”
Life in the Corporate Theater: Customer Service — “Since the first day onsite my meeting planner friend has been telling me horror stories of the service the AV company is providing. The first one starts off with something simple…”
End Point Corporation: OpenSQL Camp 2008 — “My talk on MVCC was the first talk of the day, which of course means lots of technical difficulties.” What does that say about the current state of the industry?
Make Your Point with Pow’R: The basics are the basics for a reason — “I have given presentations in the past with this laptop and projector, so what could have changed? Puzzled at first I soon realized that I replaced my laptop a few weeks ago. The new one looks the same as my old one and I forgot that I had not tested this combination yet. Thank goodness for rehearsals.”
James.Random(): Behind the scenes at PDC: The Keynote Timelapse — Has nothing to do with the actual presentations, just very cool to watch. Notice how early in the process they begin to test/calibrate the projection system. And how often they recalibrate. “I’ve just uploaded this cool video which I got hold of internally that shows how the PDC08 keynote room was assembled, used and broken down in under 6 minutes. It’s quite impressive how it all comes together, just for a few hours of presentations!”
 BizBash Los Angeles: Emergency Preparedness Panelists Stress Early, Detailed Security Measures — “Last week—just ahead of the destructive fires that burned a swath through the region—BizBash gathered Los Angeles planners for a panel on emergency preparedness at events. … Here are some of their top tips for being ready for anything.”
Executive Speech Coach: Fire Alarm During Your Presentation — “I’ve witnessed this happen to two other speakers and this week it was my turn. It’s a lot easier to think logically after it is over. It might never happen to you – but perhaps you should be prepared for the fire alarm to ring during your presentation. About eight minutes into my breakfast presentation to the local chamber of commerce at a fancy restaurant the fire alarm rang.”
HotelChatter: Fires Cause Evacuation of Four Seasons Manele Bay: Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking things like this can’t disrupt your presentation, meeting or event. “Brushfires on Lanai — which burned about 300 acres today — caused the evacuation of all guests and staff at Four Seasons Resort Lanai at Manele Bay. The fire was about a mile from the hotel when the Maui County Fire Department order the hotel to evacuate everyone to Manele Bay Harbor and onto boats.”
Rules of Thumb: Giving a Speech — “When giving a public science lecture to a general audience, there will always be one weirdo who asks questions that have nothing to do with your lecture. There will also be one smart-aleck who asks questions to show how smart he is. The faster you silence both of them, the happier your audience will be.”
Execupundit.com: Ambushed By Minor Items — “What surprises me is how often otherwise savvy individuals get to a certain point in planning and then suspend all scrutiny, relying instead upon a combination of hope, fate, and pixie dust. Things do not magically come together, but they don’t just trust on that convergence, they rely upon it.”
iGroupNews: Top 10 Services and Facilities A Meeting Planner Should Identify — “When I travel to a destination for a site inspection or to assist with a client conference, I always make it a point to arrive a day early. An early arrival allows me time to “walk†the city and gather information that a client or attendee may require outside of the confines of the hotel.”
Next Generation Event: Resources for Running Effective Meetings — “If you’re an event planner, you know how to plan events. When you’re planning an event, you leave no detail undefined. When you execute the event, you follow clearly-defined schedules and guidelines. But do you sometimes neglect those standards when running small meetings within the office? “
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