Mastering Presentations: Tech Issue Prevention

How can you prevent a technical glitch with equipment or a mishap with the technical aspects of your presentation? Because we've all seen it. Someone is standing up front of a large conference, everything's going well. They push a button. No slide. They push a button. They're expecting video, no video. They push a button, talking about this great clip, this great video, this ad they're showing. There's no audio, and it's embarrassing for them, and it's uncomfortable for you in the audience. Now, if you are the speaker, that's when you start feeling the sweat coming down. You're thinking, oh, no, this isn't working. I look like a fool. And the problem is, yeah, it is uncomfortable. So it's completely legitimate to be uncomfortable at that moment. How do you prevent this? Well, like a lot of things in life, you prevent it by doing more work up front in advance. The big problem so many speakers have is they think the preparation of their presentation is looking at slides on their laptop, hitting the return button on their laptop, even practicing, even rehearsing looking at their screens on their laptop. Well, if you are giving a presentation in front of people, whether it's a boardroom in front of six people or 20 people or 30 people, or you are at a major conference and you're in front of 80 people, 500 people, 5,000 people, the equipment you're using is actually different. If you want to be more successful, then improve your communication skills. The best way to do that, smash the subscribe button. Right now. For starters, you might be forced to use a different laptop. They may tell you, well, just email the presentation in advance. And you assume the laptop you're using is going to be the same as yours. Wrong. Every laptop can be a little bit different. The keys can be in slightly different places. The programs to play various video formats and audio formats can be different. So what you really need to do is get to the venue and do a rehearsal using exactly 100% the same equipment you're going to use in real life. Because when you're home practicing, you can push a button, return on your laptop, and that advances to the next slide. But if you're given a remote control that's going to advance two seconds before you speak, you have no idea how it works. You know, you have no idea what button does what. You may be going reverse. You're trying to go forward. You may be hitting the laser when you're expecting to advance a slide. That is the worst possible time to, to try to learn a new technology. Let's look at the technologies that you use. If you are presenting to more than a handful of people, if it's on stage or a major conference, there's the computer, there's the computer software that could be different from yours. There's a remote control. There is the device hooking into your computer that receives the message from your remote control. There is your microphone. There is the program that will play play video. And maybe the computer has all the programming perfectly to play the video, but if it's not connected to speakers that your audience can hear, you're in trouble. There is the projector. If it's projecting onto a big screen, there's a television screen. If it's projecting onto a screen, there's all the audio connection. So you add it all up, you're using dozens of different pieces of technology. And the attitude so many people have is, well, it was fine when I looked at it on my own computer, so let me just walk in and wing it. No, that is a prescription for disaster. I urge you, get to the forum in advance. If it's a major conference in another city, another part of the country, another part of the world, don't just fly in 10 minutes beforehand and go right up to the stake. Get there the night before four if you have to, do a rehearsal, even if it's 10 o' clock at night. If you're giving an 8am speech, get there at 6:30 in the morning and rehearse. One of the things you need to do is find out who is in charge of this technology. If it's a hotel, find the person. Quite often hotels rent that part of their business out to an outside service. Make sure you have the name, the phone number, the cell phone of that person. Make sure they are there for your rehearsal. Ask them questions. You may be using a new microphone that is one of these things that looks like Madonna on a rock star and it's uncomfortable, it's falling out of your ear. You may be using a different type of lav mic, the remote control may be different. Doesn't matter how tech savvy you are. I can tell you this from personal experience. The worst possible time to try to learn new technology, or for that matter learn anything, is when there are hundreds of eyeballs staring at you. At that moment you are going to feel a certain tension, there's a certain amount of adrenaline flowing through your body. So it's the worst possible time to be learning. At that point, you want to be executing, you want to be sharing your expertise, you want to be in conversation. But you do want to be essentially just going through the motions at that point, delivering people your great ideas. You don't want to have to be thinking about this button. That button is this wire here. Is this WI fi working? Speaking of WI fi, if you're playing video, huge, huge mistake to ever try to play a video off of YouTube or any other platform or your website. Do not do it. Far better to download the video file right onto the computer and play it from there. So if there is an Internet connection problem or interruption doesn't affect your presence. How many times have you seen, and I seen someone hitting a button expecting to show some nice, wonderful promotional video or great news coverage or great demonstration and all you're left with is sort of a meek apology. Well, I guess the WI fi is not working well in the convention center. Boo hoo hoo. Yeah, you might feel sympathy for that person, but that's what you remember from the presentation, not their actual ideas. The best way of using technology when you're giving a presentation is to use it in a way where your audience doesn't even notice it. They're not aware of it. They're on the edge of their seats listening to you, learning from you, getting your ideas into their head, remembering your ideas, your examples, your stories, ideally, then getting ready to leave the presentation to take the actions you want. Whether it's buying from you, investing in you, voting for you. You want it to be seamless. And the way for it to be seamless is through rehearsal. And yes, you need to rehearse on video because you can be rehearsing and using slides and everything looks fine, it feels fine to you. But if you have a video camera, even if it's your cell phone 20ft out and then you look at it, you may realize that there's all this light and letters over your face because you're blocking the projector and the screen and no one can even make out the screen. The other thing a video rehearsal will reveal to you is what's the actual experience for the audience? Because so many slides look great when you're 18 inches away looking at your own computer. But if you put the camera out in the audience maybe 50ft away and project it on you, what you will see when your slides come up is nobody in the audience can see the bottom half of the slide other than the people in the first row. So that shows you've got a real problem. That's why you want to test in the form of video rehearsal. Also, ask yourself, am I using this technology? Because it's genuinely an enhancement for my audience, or am I doing it because it's easy and I'm lazy? I'm a big fan of video. I make lots of videos every single day. But I typically don't use video in most live speeches. Why is that? It's because there is higher risk. There's so many things that can happen between the laptop, the speaker, the projector, WI fi, occasionally, all these different problems, and it's a different experience. If people come to hear me speak or hear you speak, should see you speak. If it's just playing a video, people can do that at home in their pajamas. They didn't need to get up and come see you in person. A lot of times people use video as a crutch. Well, I don't have to be interesting. I don't have to prepare an interesting presentation. I can just sort of say, hello, glad you're all here, and the channel, check this video out to learn about our organization. Click and sit down. That's the lazy way to do it. There is risk anytime you use technology. I'm not saying you shouldn't use technology. I'm using microphones and Internet and cameras right now. But when it comes to adding audio and video in your presentation, you need to ask yourself, is there really something, some idea that can only be conveyed by showing this video that I can't convey by speaking? If so, then yes, I'll play the video and I'll do the due diligence necessary to make sure the video actually works and people can see it and hear it. But if it's just people giving you testimonials or something with a little glitz and music and graphics to jazz things up to be interesting, that's a poor use of video. You need to be interesting because the ideas coming out of your mouth because of the examples, the stories you're telling that are so compelling that people want to listen, they want to learn, and they remember. So that is how you avoid problems with technology for your presentations.