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When you buy a remote, practice with it before you use it. John told us that, when he first used a remote, he practiced by sitting down and forwarding the slides. The day of the speech, he stood up by the screen. Quite often during that speech, he would turn around and notice that his slides had moved forward. He was convinced something was wrong with the computer. But hewas just pushing on the mouse forward button without being aware of doing that. If he had done a real rehearsal and stood up, he would have discovered that his finger moves more than he knows and pushes the forward button. Then during the rehearsal he could have practiced keeping his finger off the forward button when he was speaking.
Many remote mice have built-in laser pointers. That can be really convenient, but test it first. Some of the built-in laser pointers have too small a dot and don't really show up well on the screen.
Prepare for a One-on-One Talk. Don't treat a presentation as not important or think that you can be informal and improvise simply because you are presenting to only one person. Follow the same rules as if you had thirty people in the room. Plug in your laptop. Don't use the battery. You can never really plan when your battery might go out. Show the presentation in slide show mode. Minimize the amount of text and maximize the graphics. When you want to blank out the screen, just hit the "b" key while in slide show mode. This tells your audience that you just want to speak to him or her. To see other hints, hit the F1 key while in slide show mode.
Presenting Internationally
You may find yourself travelling around the world with your laptop. Here are a few technology considerations.
Carry Certain Equipment. Bring an international power adapter kit (power conversion plugs) so you can charge your laptop using various types of electrical outlets. Says one presenter: "I always carry a copy of the PowerPoint software on CD, and also on a Flash media card (192 Meg). I also save my PowerPoint file to HTML, just in case I have to borrow a machine that finds my files hard to read. These all fit nicely on the Flash media."
Use Your Own Laptop. One presenter reported: "Some countries have double-byte machines that won't run your single-byte generated presentations.It is essential that you present on your own laptop so you know the presentation will work."
Plan for Problems. Have a nonelectrical backup plan.
Personally Confirm AV Requirements. Call ahead yourself to confirm your AV equipment needs. Discuss compatibility and connectivity issues. Find out whether the images will be projected on a big screen or on small monitors. Once your needs are confirmed, then call ahead to be sure the equipment is reserved. Once there, get help to be sure you are connecting everything correctly. Travel can take its toll on remembering that things are different and you may plug in the wrong connections. One presenter said: "I had a power strip explode in Holland because I forgot the voltage was 220VAC."
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Keep a Native PowerPoint Expert Nearby. Many people have discovered that they need to have a translator available to look at the slides. Some presenters advised: "Make sure that you have somebody familiar with PowerPoint since the menus are in the local language. At an international meeting, I had difficulty with PowerPoint versions that have non-Roman alphabet characters, like Chinese or Arabic. At least with French or German, I can fudge my way around the menus." "In Eastern Europe I had to merge someone else's slides with Russian fonts into my slides. I did not have the correct fonts loaded, and couldn't tell because I couldn't read any of it anyway."
Limit the File Size. In some parts of the world, try not to bring PDF files or presentations so big that you need a Zip. Technology is not up-to-date everywhere, so create something that fits on a 3.5 floppy disk. We were told this story: "A presenter's laptop was not compatible, apparently with the projector. It almost ruined his hard drive. We needed three hours to ‘bring it back to life.' His presentation was so big he hadn't saved it on a disk. We had to work from a previous stored version in my computer and translate it from English to Spanish in twenty minutes. It wasn't funny."
Don't Try to Connect to the Internet. This takes very good planning, well ahead of your trip. Don't do it if you don't absolutely have to. At least have some slides with your "cached" Internet pages just in case you can't connect to the Internet.
Learning from Others' Stories
Here are some stories we've gathered to motivate you to take the time to prepare appropriately. Many times taking an added hour would prevent problems or at least enable you to overcome them quickly.
Too Small Type on the Screen. "A woman was giving a pitch to a new client. The gentleman complained that he couldn't read the words on the screen. Atthe end he said, ‘If they couldn't put together an adequate presentation, how will they put together a competitive marketing scheme?' The woman was given the choice to accept an assistant position or find another job."
"In almost every presentation I've seen, there has been one unreadable slide. Some are even so bad that the presenters say, ‘Now you won't be able to read this but....' It amazes me that they say this like it isn't a problem."
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