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The Invisible Backup. "I don't have time to make backups. I'm finishing the presentation the night before." Upon arriving to teach a seminar, the presenter stated she didn't have time to prepare overheads. Right after that as she was moving the table around, her laptop fell off the table and crashed to the ground. It never restarted. If the presenter had brought overheads, the seminar would have taken place that day.
If you do make overheads, don't leave them in your office. One presenter left them in his office and had to go get them. In this world, where time is a factor, one has to be ready for all technological failures and be ready to sell whatever is to be sold.
"My laptop died. I had no backup. I ended up drawing on a whiteboard, and the meeting went very well. It pays to know what you are going to present. But now I plan for computer crashes."
Dead Batteries. "I was sure I had just put in new batteries, but thirty minutes into my talk the laptop went off." If the presentationis very important put in new batteries before you start your presentation.
"A presenter's batteries died in his remote. I was sitting by the laptop and I advanced the slides using the space bar while the presenter pointed the remote, as though he was clicking. No one in the audience knew the difference."
The Auto Save Feature. "I just didn't think about what I was doing. I was in a hurry." Sometimes a situation seems to be an emergency. People tend to overreact and not consider the consequences of what they are doing. This can be disastrous on the computer. "Twenty minutes before a speech I was asked to produce a handout. Quickly I deleted all the unwanted slides, making the presentation ten instead of forty slides. The auto save feature was on and had overwritten the file. I did not have a backup file. BUT one of my associates had made a disk of the speech. When asked why he had it, he said, ‘I always expect the unexpected.'"
New Projectors. "I bought the latest model. I didn't have time to test it." Just because your computer works with one projector doesn't mean it will work with the latest release of that same brand. "I recently had a color video clip that ran fine on my projector. I then switched projectors, to a newer model with the same manufacturer. I discovered that the video clip would not project at all unless the properties of the video clip were set to black and white. This greatly reduced the impact and effectiveness of the video clip." The moral of this story is to actually try out several presentations on a projector before you buy it.
First in the Morning or Right After Lunch. "I try very hard to be the first presenter on in the morning or the first after lunch so I can run through the presentation at least once before ‘show time.' I have uncovered a multitude of errors this way. Sometimes I have to adjust the background of the slide because of the projection equipment. It is easy to do when I can run through it in advance. Sometimes sound is a problem and can be worked out in advance. When I plan to use the Internet, I have my sites ‘cached' so there are no snags. If I don't have an opportunity to run through the presentation on-site in advance, I consider refusing the engagement."
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Sleeping Laptop. "I didn't even know this problem existed." Most people who start using a laptop learn about the problems as they happen. Speaking to your colleagues and asking their advice and reading a book like this will help you not personally experience as many issues, such as this example.
"I was giving my first laptop presentation, waiting for my turn in class. I got up and my screen was black. In desperation, I hit control-alt-delete at least a dozen times. I plugged it in thinking the battery had run down. Nothing! I gave up and used my overheads. Thank goodness I had them. Later, I discovered that my laptop had gone to sleep."
The Telephone Line Connection. "It works in my office. I'm sure it will work anywhere." "The presenter didn't check the hotel's telephone connection beforehand. He couldn't get it to work so he had to connect to the Internet through his mobile phone. This connection was slow and every slide took MINUTES to appear. It may have cost him his job."
Changes at the Last Minute. "One time with the military, I went there a week before to set everything up and try it all out. The day of the speech, five minutes before start time, I was informed the general wanted the room. We were delegated to a room with only an overhead projector."
"I arrived very early for a training session. I found the room I was told I had. Set it all up. It looked great. I was sitting and speaking to a participant about fifteen minutes before the training was to start. Someone came in and told me I was in the wrong room. The ‘right' room according to someone else turned out to be one-third the size of the room I had. Good for five people, not the ten I had. I swallowed hard, smiled, and taught all day. I was later apologized to for the mix-up, but that didn't help the lousy day I had in that small, cramped room. Several months later I saw one of the participants from that day's training and he said, ‘I really admired how you kept your spirits up after we ended up in that terrible room.'"
Above All, Do No Harm, Literally. "I was about to present a sixty-slide PRprogram overseas to a group of sixty-five European product managers. The hotel's technician started messing around with the electrical plugs as I stood over him repeatedly saying, ‘PLEASE, SIR, don't touch that one.' He pulled my three-prong American plug out of the adapter I brought, and twisted it into the two-prong Italian socket. My laptop emitted a bright flash and went completely, utterly, and irrevocably dead. All the lights in the room went out as well. After the lights went back on, the technician refused to leave the stage until I accepted his apology. At that point I had already started extemporaneously presenting. My client later said, ‘Those who don't know you would never have guessed that anything was wrong. Those of us who doknow you were very impressed that you managed not to harm the technician.'"
Turn the Laptop Off. "One time I was using different sounds with my laptop, probably too many. My computer froze up. So I pulled the cord out and it didn't go dead. Someone then reminded me I had to also take out the battery. Well, I hadn't taken out the battery in a while and it was not a seamless, relaxed experience."
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