Help! My Laptop Died Halfway Through My Presentation!

The only way to survive this well is to prepare for it beforehand. If you speak regularly and use equipment such as a laptop and projector then unfortunately one thing you can guarantee is that your equipment will fail at some point. That’s not me being pessimistic, thats just the reality of it.

I present regularly in a variety of settings from informal small rooms to large halls with their own technical setup. I generally take my own gear, including a projector. Sometimes a venue will has a purpose built room with a really efficient setup and I use their equipment. Almost without fail this leads to some kind of problems.

Perhaps the best onsite setup for public speaking I’ve ever seen was the scene of the worst presentation I’ve ever given. The setup was intricate and the IT support guy appeared to have little idea of how it worked. By the time he got it sorted the audience was bored. They had resorted to talking amongst themselves and weren’t really interested in turning their attention to me for the final few minutes of my timeslot. I was new to public speaking and still relied heavily on my slideshow, so without it I was at a loss. I could have avoided this by having a backup plan so that I could carry on without relying on my slideshow.

But prevention is the best approach so before you leave check:

• Does your remote have batteries in it that work, do you have spares?
• Does your laptop work? Does your projector work? (If you haven’t used it for a while then best make sure, and if you’re using someone else’s gear don’t trust it unless you’ve seen it working for yourself.)
• Do you have the necessary cables for your laptop/projector?
• Keep your laptop battery fully charged in case there are no power sockets available.
  Take an extension cord and multiplug adaptor.
• Arrive early so you have time to work out problems. Ideally you can get everything setup well beforehand so you can relax prior to your presentation.
• If you normally use a Mac have you checked that it will work on a PC? I know they are supposed to but the formatting gets thrown out sometimes.
• Is the microphone working? Is it turned on? Is it set at a good level? Do you know how to turn it up/down and on/off if you need to?
• If you’ve just brought your presentation on a flash drive then make sure you plug it in and check it works before you begin.

If you’re going to an unfamiliar venue then I recommend you do a dress rehearsal setup of all your gear before you go. Even if the venue says “don’t worry about a laptop we’ll have all the gear ready, just bring your presentation on a Flash drive”, I will still always take my own laptop (and maybe even a projector) just to be safe.

Even if you do everything right there are things outside of your control that can still let you down so have a backup plan. You should be able to still give a good presentation even if your equipment completely fails. This is where you really get to show your presentation skills. Even if you never have to resort to your backup plan (if you present regularly then I bet you will) you will still feel more confident knowing that you are prepared for all circumstances.

10 Great Techniques To Put Your Audience To Sleep

Ever had trouble staying awake while listening to a speaker? Wish you had the ability to do this to? Here I reveal the secrets. By following these simple techniques you too can put your audience to sleep…

1. Create slide after slide of text and read it to them word for word - The sheer monotony of this will work wonders on your audience and they’ll be dozing off in no time.

2. Speak in a monotone - Don’t allow yourself to speak dynamically in any way, keep the tone of your voice dull and lifeless. This will lull your audience into a sleepy stupor.

3. Tell your audience what they already know - Ideally something that you told them in a previous talk. If you do have to come up with some new material then at least try to throw in some jokes they’ve already heard.

4. Keep your talk free from any sort of structure - You don’t want them to be able to follow what you’re talking about. Jump around in an illogical way so that your audience becomes confused and gives up trying to pay attention to you. This will allow them to drift off.

5. Baffle your audience with meaningless and irrelevant waffle - Use terminology they aren’t familiar with, use abbreviations as much as possible and don’t give explanations for them. Talk about situations without giving a background so they can’t understand where you’re coming from.

6. Avoid creating any sort of personal connection with your audience - Keep them at a distance. Don’t look directly at them - look down at your notes or up at the ceiling for the entire talk. Whatever you do – avoid eye contact at all costs.

7. Don’t smile or use humour - This will allow your audience to enjoy your talk and mean they may want to pay attention to you.

8. Close the windows and crank up the heating - Get there early so have plenty of time to ensure the room is really hot and stuffy by the time your audience arrives. If there is a water cooler in the room make sure there aren’t any cups.

9. Labour every point you make - Especially the unimportant ones, reiterate them time and time again like a broken record.

10. Speak longer than you need to - If the tips above haven’t worked then keep talking, the longer the better. Just keep on rambling, don’t leave them wanting more.

How To Setup Your Laptop For Powerpoint Presentations

1. Turn off your screensaver so that it doesn’t appear half way through your presentation. In Windows XP you do this in: Control Panel > Display


2. Change the power settings so that your laptop doesn’t turn off when you shut the lid or when there has been no activity for a while. In Windows XP you do this in: Control Panel > Power Settings


3. Make sure you plug it in to the mains. Even if you have a good battery you should use mains power just to be safe. Make sure your battery is fully charged just in case there are no power sockets nearby.


4. Close all other programs to make sure that your laptop can use all it’s power to run your slideshow.

Don't Go Animation Crazy

When they are first discovered the many custom animation techniques available in PowerPoint can be very enticing. The opportunity to have words flying in at angles and spinning around, using fancy colours and crazy fonts and so on seems like a great idea. We find ourselves using them simply because they exist

You’ve probably seen them used, and used them yourself (myself included) but do these things actually help your audience understand the presentation any better? No - what they do, in my opinion, is to make your presentation seem amateurish.

My personal rule is if in doubt - avoid all effects unless there is a really good reason to do so.
To contradict myself I have to add that I have used custom animation techniques very effectively on occasion. Here are some examples of how they can work very well:

• For humour: you can use crazy fonts/colours etc on a slide to give your audience a laugh.
• Slide transition: the fade between slides and images does make your presentation feel smoother. However I generally avoid any sort of wipe/dissolve/zoom etc.
• With images: Custom animation effects like Motion paths and Crawl in can be used very effectively with images. Try to keep the animation techniques less noticeable than the images.

It can be great fun to play around with effects but perhaps you should put that time to better use by preparing your talk some more or practicing delivering it.

Film Yourself To See How You Look And Sound

It can be a very enlightening experience to film yourself presenting and watch it back. You’ll definitely see yourself in a new light and find things you want to improve. I did this with some colleagues recently and we were all surprised with what we saw. You’ll see yourself do things you never realised you did.

It doesn’t have to be a high tech recording, even just a few minutes recorded on a digital camera or mobile phone will give you an something to work with. When you watch yourself back think about these sorts of things:

• Do you look confident or nervous?
• What are you doing with your hands?
• How much time do you spend looking at the audience, the screen and your notes?
• Are you smiling?
• Are you speaking clearly and at an appropriate speed?
• Do you look/sound like you know what you’re talking about?
• How often did you say “um” etc?
• How often do you play with your hair etc?
• Would you find yourself interesting?

If you don’t have the equipment to film yourself you can get a similar effect from practicing your speech while standing in front of a mirror.

Looking At Your Audience Establishes A Connection

Many people new to public speaking have a lot of trouble keeping their eyes on their audience. The big screen or their notes/laptop seem like they are a magnet for their eyes. But looking at your audience is a key skill in public speaking as it establishes a connection. Look them in the eye - talk to them, not at them.

Some public speakers have no idea what they are saying unless they are reading it from their notes or laptop screen. They can end up spending the whole of their presentation turning between the big screen and their audience like they are watching a really fast tennis match.

One way to help this is to memorise your presentation. If you’re like me - with a less than perfect memory - then this isn’t easy. I tend to think of my talks in terms of chunks. That is, I remember a slide at a time and refer to my laptop or the screen as a prompt only when I have to.

Another way to help this is to set up your laptop in such a way that you can see it while you present. If you’re using a lectern this is simple but even on a stage you could put it off to the side on a table/chair for example. This means that you can see what is happening on the big screen without constantly turning around to look at it.

I use this technique all the time. I prefer to work with images and, as long as I can see the screen out of the corner of my eye, they are enough to remind me of what I want to say. Once you get the hang of this people don’t even notice you doing it and will presume that you have memorised your slideshow or are making it up on the spot.

Learn Presentation Techniques From Al Gore

If you’re looking for a role model with great presentation techniques to follow then you can’t go past Al Gore. There are many examples out there but I mention Al Gore because the film based on his presentation ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ is readily available. Here’s the official site but you should be able to rent it from your local DVD store.

When you watch it take note of his presentation techniques such as:

• how he stands
  
• the tone of his voice
  
• how he holds his hands
  
• when he pauses
  
• when he changes his slides
  

Also take note of the structure of his talk and the content of his slides. Despite the very complex and technical nature of a lot of the content of his presentation (data, figures, graphs etc), he still uses a great deal of images rather than slide after slide of text. If he presented all that information in terms of text then he wouldn’t have created the same following as it would have been dull and boring. So using images instead of text is a great idea if you want to make sure your audience is still awake at the end of your presentation.