How Do You Respond When Equipment Fails During a Presentation?

Equipment will fail. Your Laptop will display the “Blue Screen of Death.” The Bulb in your Projector will suddenly “Pop!” You will:

  • Forget to pack your Power Cord
  • Bring the wrong PowerPoint Presentation
  • Trip over a Power Cord and …

It is not a question of IF; it is a question of WHEN. When your equipment fails, how will you respond? What will you do? How will you recover?

This question was posed on one of the LinkedIn Groups that I belong to – “Great Communicators! Effective Presenting & PowerPoint.” I posted my thoughts – including my own list of what to bring whenever I travel to make a presentation. Geetesh Bajaj, a Microsoft MVP for PowerPoint liked my response and he turned it into an article on his blog. Click here to read the article and to see my list of “essentials to pack” for your next presentation.

Prepare your presentation. Prepare yourself. Prepare your recovery from an equipment failure. Expect the unexpected!

Please let me know what you have done – or wish that you had done – when your equipment fails during a presentation or a training session. Feel free to share a “war story” or two about what happened to you or that you saw happen during a presentation.

This article is published by EzineArticles – Click here to read or download it.

How to supercharge your career in 17 minutes

“We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.”

– Eric Hoffer

Tom Peters has an interesting post on his blog -“Get To (Serious!!) Work … On Your Presentation Skills!”

He points out how one Seventeen Minute speech in 2004 catapulted Sen. Barack Obama’s career. Sen.. Obama delivered the Keynote Speech at the 2004 Democratic National attention and he “caught fire.”  He went from a virtually unknown young politician to becoming the presumptive Presidential nominee of his party in less than 4 years!

Fueled by his 17 minute speech!

In 1988 another relatively unknown politician first caught our eye when he delivered a (very long) nominating speech for Gov. Michael Dukakis. That was our first national notice of (then) Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas.

Yes, it is time to “Get Serious – really serious – about working on your presentation skills.” To quote from the Tom Peters article:

“Fact, in “our” more modest worlds: Poor or average or even “okay” presentation skills trip up or hold back an incredible number of very talented people at all levels, including the highest in big orgs—and yet it is rare to see someone launch a martial-arts-training-like, no-bull, I’m-gonna-master-this-or-die-trying offensive on presentation skill improvement.

Why not?”

Indeed! Why not? Why don’t you put more effort into improving your presentation skills? What is holding you back? Do you realize how much your “so-so” presentation skills are holding you back – from advancing in your career? Holding you back from getting what you really want in your life?

It’s not enough to say, “they are a naturally gifted speaker and I just am not.” That is just BS!

Talent, alone, does not guarantee success. It is the intense desire to work on fully developing our talents that determines our long-term success.

Will Sen. Obama’s desire to become President of the USA drive him to improve his natural speaking talents? He will need to improve his debating skills and to work on his responses to questions if he is to succeed.

I’ll be blogging about the presentation skills (or lack of skills) of our Presidential candidates up until the November election.  I will be interested to see which candidate shows the most desire to succeed.

Which candidate will really commit to fully developing his communications skills? Which candidate is is most interested in supercharging his career?