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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spectacle at Web2.0 Expo… from my perspective (apophenia) – A week before the conference, I received word from the organizers that I was not going to have my laptop on stage with me. The dirty secret is that I actually read a lot of my talks but the audience doesn't actually realize this because scanning between my computer and the audience is usually pretty easy. So it doesn't look like I'm reading. … I pushed back, asked to get my notes on the screen in front of me, but was told that this wasn't going to be possible. I was told that I was going to have a podium. So I resigned to having a podium. … When I showed up at the conference, I realized that the setup was different than I imagined. The podium was not angled, meaning that the paper would lie flat, making it harder to read and get away with it. Not good. .. I only learned about the Twitter feed shortly before my talk. … When I walked out on stage, I was also in for a new shock: the lights were painfully bright. … Taken aback by this, my talk started out rough."
Conference Humiliation: They’re Tweeting Behind Your Back (The Chronicle of Higher Education) – "Perfect conditions propelled this Twitter torrent: a speaker who delivered what was apparently a technically flawed and topically dated talk to a crowd of Web experts who expected better. They reacted by flaying him with more than 500 tweets in one hour. The onslaught grew so large that it went viral—live. The conference became one of the most popular topics on Twitter, meaning strangers with no connection to the meeting gaped at Mr. Galper's humiliation when they logged onto their home pages. One consultant who coaches academics on public speaking now uses the disaster as a what-to-avoid case study." [thanks to @tonyramos for the heads up tweet]
Cut off after 2 minutes (Speaking Energy: Adventures in Public Speaking) – "In the smaller room there are a lot more distractions as well. If my audience of one decides to do something else besides listen…well, my presentation just got a lot more difficult — and energy depleting. … The person I was speaking to (or trying to) had just come out of a high stress meeting an hour before I met him. He had a lot on his mind. Very distracted. One of the first points I raised was something similar to an issue he recently had. This set him off."
The First Slide in Your PowerPoint/Keynote Presentation (Tod Maffin) – "About four years ago while giving a keynote presentation about leading 'the Facebook generation' in the workplace, disaster struck. I was about mid-way through the speech, talking about new models for employee benefit plans, when the following popped up on the screen — in front of 2,200 people…" [Yes, it's pretty much as embarrassing as you're imagining. Tod offers a really clever solution. Thank for the heads up tweet @OliviaMitchell.]
You Must Have a Good Sound System (Great Public Speaking) – "A humorous speech demands a better sound system than a serious speech. In a serious talk, words can be missed and the main message can still be very clear. In humor it doesn't work that way. If key words are missed in a joke or story, it will ruin the humor. No one will laugh and you will look like a giant goober. The need for a thorough sound check is another good reason to be in the room early. You need to check the microphone to make sure it works. You need to check to see how far your mouth should be from the microphone. You need to know how loudly you should talk. Realize that during your check the audio level should be very loud. People will absorb the sound once they get into the room."
All eyes on you — as you choke (Crain’s Chicago Business) – "But sometimes, getting past a disaster of a presentation can be freeing. One of Mr. Connellan's clients, an executive from a very large company, was asked to update 2,000 people at a conference. She was ready for the performance but froze when she got up to the podium. She fainted with her hands gripping the lectern, pulling it on top of her, and had to be carried offstage."
Final act (leewochner.com) – "…but we had major ongoing tech problems, too. At the end of an 8-hour cue-to-cue rehearsal in which all the light and sound cues were programmed, they mysteriously disappeared. All of them had to be reprogrammed, which added nine hours onto the day. (I said, “I won’t be here at 2 a.m.” And wound up leaving at 1:56 a.m.)…"
Be the Duck: The Key to Calm (speakfearlessly.net) – "Most people, if rolling out a franchise product in front of thousands of people and something went wrong, would panic. But Jobs is a master. He casually said, 'Guys, the slides are stuck.' Then he made a joke about 'Somebody backstage is scrambling,' which everyone knew to mean, 'Somebody is fired.'" [In a previous life, I had a boss who called this calm "The Valium Bubble" (http://www.breakingmurphyslaw.com/2008/05/08/the-valium-bubble/) and it's just as important for those backstage as it is for the folks onstage.]
Venues again… (tellingpeople) – "Yesterday I mentioned that when you’re working somewhere other than your office it’s a really good idea to have one person in charge of logistics. Today I’d like to make a quick comment about some of the things that your venue might not provide (despite saying they will). The obvious solution, of course, is to take your own…."
Venues… (tellingpeople) – "Because bitter experience has taught us that if there are several people who are responsible for making sure everything runs correctly, they’ll both leave something to the other and it won’t get done. They’ll both sneak off for a cuppa for five minutes, thinking you’re covered by their partner… Everyone needs a tea-break, sure, but if one person feels responsible for looking after you, they’ll certainly come and tell you that they won’t be around for 10 minutes, so at least you know. And they’ll be back after 10 minutes too, not the 15 or 20 minutes people take if they think they’re being covered by a ‘partner’."
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