When I was still working at InFocus a dozen years ago, I was asked to team up with Tom Mucciolo, a NY delivery skills coach, at a trade show. InFocus had a huge booth and Tom and I were to put on “shows” every 30-minutes around our client services group and our presentation design business. True to form for laptops back in 1997 , you were guaranteed at least one lock-up.
Sure enough with 30 people standing there, and during a demo of some embedded video in PowerPoint, the laptop froze. It took a good 3-4 minutes to reboot while Tom vamped some crazy dialog around our wonderful services. 10 minutes later with the same group – disaster struck once again. The moral to that story… if something can go wrong – it usually will with the greatest amount of people in attendence. Today, I test everything!
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My worst presentation is much simpler than any of the technology related examples. I was a grad student – teaching a lab to a number of undergrads. The classroom was an old style classroom with room width chalk boards and a platform across the front. Practicing my purposeful movement, on one of those slow arcs across the room my one foot went off the side of the platform/stage. Not my most graceful presentation to be sure.
I learned the lesson that the colors you select when creating a PowerPoint presentation often appear much different when presented electronically.
I remember one last minute reseller training I put together on the fly in some obscure part of the world and in an attempt to be dramatic used some fairly vivid colors and some different type styles to accentuate important points. Well…the projector that I was relegated to using was from the neolithic age and had very poor resolution and contrast. Therefore…in addition to the already challenging language problems I gave the entire audience a severe headache trying to decipher my messages because they had all kind of blended together in an ugly “stew” of colors and words.
I was left looking like the poor presenter using the hand puppets in stead of his material. Woe is me!!!
The lesson…control your presentation medium and tools if at all possible…and have a plan B if all else fails.
Hi Mark!
Thanks for your contribution. That’s probably the toughest concept for most of us – less is always more when it comes to PowerPoint. It’s painfully counter-intuitive. After all, why would the put all that stuff in there if we weren’t suppose to use it! jim
On a recent trip in China, I learned the power of using the correct titles when making introductions. My informality in using a first name and a shortened position title was not intentional and yet it was hurtful and not helpful.
Thankfully my colleague pointed out to me my lack of consideration and I am now able to remedy that with certain audiences (especially Asian).
The lesson learned…always, always study and know your audience and the “rules” (spoken and unspoken) to the conversation and communication process.
I think my biggest presentation disaster was when the microphone malfunctioned throughout my entire presentation. After learning all about the importance of movement, I was forced to stand in one spot for fear that the audience would endure a horrible feedback noise if I moved. Once the feedback problem settled down, then the microphone kept cutting in and out. I finally ended up shouting the remainder of my presentation after giving up on the sound equipment all altogether. I do think the audience was somewhat entertained by my embarrassment, but I’m certain they didn’t have a clue what I was trying to communicate.
Hi Jeri! Hosed by technology! If a had a nickel… The reality is most audiences seem to empathize… to a point. They been in tough spots themselves and give us some grace… for a while. If the distraction becomes too great, sometimes the abbreviated presentation game plan makes great sense. I’ve seen you present. You’re great, Jeri!
Once way back I was to present on the “multimedia PC of the future” so I knew I’d better have the technology working. I did, with about five backups – laptops, overheads, printouts, and more. What I didn’t have was a backup TOPIC – the group before me did theirs and then proceeded to cover mine! I improvised by throwing together a panel discussion instead, but geez!
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