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.