Breaking Murphy's Law

What did you say?

Lee Potts — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 13:55:39 +0000

Here’s a gem from meeting planner Deborah Elias’ piece describing the challenges she faced in putting together 3 events in 3 nights:

Never assume your vendors will share information, even among their own staff. Always verify that the appropriate people receive firsthand information for accuracy, then follow-up with a thorough conference call. Despite its convenience, email often leaves too much to interpretation.

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Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: accuracy, Conference Call, Deborah Elias, interpretation, meeting planner

Recovery Room

Lee Potts — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 13:55:13 +0000

In his post “How To Recover From A Speaking FAIL,” Tom Webster recounts a typical story of hardware failure, offers some thoughtful recovery advice, and still manages to coin my new favorite neologism: “laptopocalypse”.

I gave a keynote right before lunch on how to think about data, and I was rolling right along when all of a sudden, exactly halfway through, my MacBook Pro crashed. Hard. Spinning-beach-ball-of-death hard. With 45 slides left to go. I won’t say I was “unfazed” but I hope I was unflappable. I’ve been standing up in front of clients and audiences for over 15 years, and let me tell you–something always happens, especially when you are doing client presentations, where you don’t necessarily have any support or backup.

I was humbled and grateful for all of the positive tweets I received during the speech for how I handled the laptopocalypse (I finished the story from the section I was on and took a few questions while I put a backup laptop online and got my slides off a USB stick) but it certainly wasn’t my natural reserves of cool that got me through it. It was training and practice. Learned behaviors. Since this sort of thing is bound to happen to you if you present in any capacity, I thought it might be useful to share exactly

And here’s another great point:

I will admit to being a little “nonplussed” when I see a speaker have a tech fail and then call for A/V because they are “no good with these things.”

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Categories: Pre-presentation, Problems with Equipment, Problems with Staging
Tags: failure, laptop, laptopocalypse, recovery, tom webster

Sticker Shock

Lee Potts — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 17:55:37 +0000

Pack a backup? What for? I can always by one when we get there. It’s not like we’re going into the wilderness. I mean, how much can they jack up the price. It’s not going to cost so much that if impacts the budget.

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Categories: Post-presentation, Pre-presentation, Problems with Budget, Problems with Equipment, Problems with Venue
Tags: BACKUPS, budget, price, wilderness

Entire Content

Lee Potts — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 13:55:23 +0000

David Craig’s post “Dealing with Tech Failure” includes, along with a couple other good tips, a reminder of what it really requires to be completely prepared for video failure during your presentation.:

Video in a presentation is a tricky proposition even if everything works properly. Anything more than a short clip gets tedious for the audience in a hurry. But if you insist on including video in your presentation, be ready to describe the entire content of the video if it doesn’t play. That’s what TV newscasters have done for decades when the film, the tape or a live feed doesn’t work.

Might want to give some more thought to how important, how critical, that flashy piece of video really is to making your point.

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Categories: Problems with Content, Problems with Equipment
Tags: description, failure, video

Overheard on Twitter: Hot Stuff

Lee Potts — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 00:59:49 +0000

It’s always important to have water at the podium. When the AC is out, it’s crucial.

No AC @hopeinGod tonight. 86° on the stage before lights up & warmer in the booth. #OldeTimeyChurch night. By God's grace we get to gather!
— Jonathan Davis (@JAD77) July 7, 2012

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Categories: Overheard on Twitter, Pre-presentation, Problems with Venue, Things to Think About
Tags: AC, air conditioner, heat

"Overheard on Twitter: Hot Stuff" was originally posted on Breaking Murphy's Law on July 07, 2012. Copyright 2012 Lee Potts and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.