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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This blog was active from April, 2008 to July 2012.
It is no longer being updated. It will continue to be maintained for reference purposes.

The Weekly Might Have Missed List (09/21/08)

news.com.au: Porn served up to government officials — “A senior civil servant is facing the sack after pornographic images flashed up as he delivered a powerpoint presentation to government officials in the Solomon Islands.”

Make Your Point with Pow’R: Screen Captures — “Never, ever, demo live websites during a presentation. You run the risk of at least the following, and possibly much more going wrong.”

©iStockphoto.com/zoomstudio

©iStockphoto.com/zoomstudio

Great Public Speaking: More on CD ROM Backups of your Program — “I did a speaking gig this week in Vegas and had to use my backup presentation on CDROM. Low and behold, when I opened the presentation it was barely readable!”

Fortify Your Oasis: Know Your Audience — “Have you ever been at a wedding where the best man told what he thought were hilarious stories about the groom – stories that fell completely flat with the majority of the audience?”

MostToast: Don’t Put Toastmasters On Your Resume — “They stopped him after thirty-four minutes; thirty-four minutes of false starts and dead ends. They stopped him after spending thirty-four minutes listening to something that wasn’t closely relevant to the position. Sam had blown the presentation.”

Life in the Corporate Theater: Sonoma — “Moral of the story? Don’t completely shut your sliding glass door on a hotel balcony. I can’t imagine what I would have done if I was on the 12th floor. Also, make sure you have clothes on. I never would have lived it down if I had to climb over to Allen’s balcony in my underwear!”

Corporate Presenter: French Farce — “TF1’s Laurence Ferrari runs into a bit of hot bother with Al Pacino & Robert de Niro earlier this week”

The World: 8 Timely Tips for Pre-Presentation Preparation By Patricia Fripp CSP, CPAE — “The big day has come. You are ready to deliver your presentation. To guarantee your success there are still a few final steps to take before you face your audience.”

The Software Pro: Choosing a Presentation Remote — “Rehearsing with your remote should be a built-in part of your presentation rehearsal to avoid distracting your audience and accomplishing the goal of communicating your message.”

The Grammarphobia Blog: Daised by podiumbrage — “God, I’m turning into a grump, but when it comes to politics and language, abuses get me downright dyspeptic. One common mistake has surfaced during the recent heady convention days. It’s the misuse of “podium” for “lectern.” I suppose I’m a lone voice crying in the wilderness on this one, but the podiumbrage has left me daised.” Good news is it’s now acceptable to use “podium” for “lectern.”

ManageSmarter: The Top 12 Presentation Mistakes — “Mistake #1: Overlooking “Murphy” If it can go wrong, it will go wrong. This mistake basically means that you walk into the room where you’re going to present and something is wrong. LeRoux tells a story about a multimillion-dollar sales presentation to which “Murphy” paid a visit—in the form of missing curtains and a boardroom window overlooking a huge pool surrounded by bikini-clad swimmers (you can guess what the attendees looked at instead of the presenter).”

The Weekly Might Have Missed List (08/31/08)

Grammar Girl: Funny Homophones — “When you pick the wrong word, your readers laugh at your amusing sentence. It’s great to put them at ease with a joke or two, but if they’re smiling at what you wrote in all seriousness, that’s not good. Other readers don’t laugh; they cringe and wince, lament and vent. Some sticklers just stop reading.”

MostToast: Rehearse and Learn — “Make a commitment to practice and rehearsal with the equipment that you will use during your presentation: it will make your presenting life much easier.”

Speak Schmeak: Run out of time? Never again! — “A common presenter mistake is to run out of time. Even when you’ve practiced, you sometimes find yourself rushing the last five or ten minutes of your presentation, wondering where the time went. Well, here’s an easy solution.”

Execupundit.com: Crisis Management Students — “I’ve kept both responses in mind over the years whenever considering a potential crisis and have asked, ‘What if this is one of those occasions when those students are correct?'”

Make Your Point with Pow’R: Applying Project Management Principles to Presentations — “How do you keep track of everything? How do you remember to send your introduction a week before the presentation? Do you even know who to send it to? The easiest way to deliver powerful presentations every time, is by creating a simple project plan of the work to be done, and then working your plan. In this podcast, you can learn ‘How to use Project Management Principles to plan your next presentation’.”

Speak Fearlessly: The Path to Presentation Peace: Mindfulness and Stillness — “Another very handy place to use this technique is in the practice of presentations. It’s all very well to be prepared, but if something goes awry (a cell phone rings, the wrong slide pops up), it’s easy to panic. Anxiety, and stress = sweaty palms, physical tremors, accelerated heart rate and more. When this happens, we begin to focus on the feeling of anxiety and not what’s happened to interrupt the presentation.”

Fortify Your Oasis: Golden Oldies – Thoughts on Presenting — “This poor woman utterly lost her audience. Hers was the one subject of the day that any doctor should have been interested in, but they were now going to remember her presentation for all the wrong reasons.”

vctips: Join Twitter to follow these tips. Good things to keep in mind in order to avoid disaster when presenting to venture capitalists. A lot of these are useful for presenting to other audiences as well.

Control Booth: Storage of lav mics — Take care of your mics and they’ll take care of you (by not failing mid-presentation).

The Weekly Might Have Missed List (08/10/08)

Fortify Your Oasis: Presentation party pieces — “Most trainers and skilled presenters have a couple of these schticks that they can pull out at the drop of a hat. It’s a very good idea, because you never know when you are going to have to fill some ‘dead air’ because of a technical hitch or a late arrival. Steve Jobs illustrated this really well in his January 2007 keynote. His remote clicker stopped working and so did the backup.”

Sales and Marketing Manager.com: Sales Clown & — “Two selling blunders from Dan Seidman of SalesAutopsy.com. A couple guys drink slurpies before a call. And a former Xerox rep memorizes her pitch for a disastrous presentation.”

LinkedIn Answers (Michael Seidle): What is the worst presentation gaffe you’ve ever seen?

Great Public Speaking: CHECK EACH SEAT and SAVER LINES.

Learning as I go: The Day In Which I Spoke In Front of 200 People — “So, about ten minutes before a company-wide presentation is being made, it has come to our attention that there is no moderator. By the time I’m found, I’m told that I will need to do it. Uh. Crap. Me is not a public speaker as I will skipsy all over my words or start to babble with some weird fillers. No way. I cannot remember the last time I spoke to a room with more than six or seven people. 200? No.”

Communication Skills For Technical Staff: 5 Ways To Deliver A Disastrous Presentation

Control Booth Discussion Board: Human Stupidity — Photos of dangerous things witnessed  during meeting setup and backstage. Apparently there’s a lot of things you shouldn’t do with ladders, fork lifts and power cables.

Overnight Sensation: Public Speaking Success: Death by Time Limit – Tip for Trainers — “The point is that if you’re supposed to end at a certain time and you don’t, you’ll notice the energy level of the room suddenly drop.”

Valley Wag: IAC building power outage kills New York tech meetup, spares us all — “New York wantrepreneurs preparing for a night of rejection and glazed looks can relax — tonight’s New York Tech Meetup is canceled due to a power outage at IAC.”

Terrific Public Speaking and Presentation Skills: How Many People Will Speak at Your Funeral?