I've been attending a number conferences recently and it never ceases to amaze me how many people have no idea how their laptop works. Specifically, I'm talking about how to connect a projector to your laptop.
If you're speaking and need to project something, spend some time and educate yourself on how to connect and mirror your laptop screen. You can try to feign confusion/ignorance, but if you're speaking at a tech conference it's hard to pull that off.
It's like showing up to speak with no pants on and trying to claim, "I don't know what happened, I just can't figure out my zipper, it worked fine at the office...."
Visitor Comments
Guilty.
Interesting comparison to "my zipper, it worked fine at the office...." though.
Posted by: Andrea Weckerle | December 15, 2006 10:21 AM
Good point about the pants. I like it.
Cheers
Darren
Posted by: Public speaking coach | January 8, 2007 11:57 PM
Been there; done that! :-) How many times have I made the stupid mistake of not bringing the proprietary connector for my laptop to a projector/monitor?
Lessons learned hard. I always carry extra cables and connectors with me. Ya never know. And now that I present on podcasting more and more, I just can't get away with, "Oh, well, TECHNOLOGY, ya know... "
Posted by: Heidi Miller | January 10, 2007 11:50 AM
Not just the right kit, but spares for the right kit!
Spare lamp for the projector? Spare fuses?
It's the basic stuff like this that you dare not get wrong, no matter how good your sexy stuff is. Get the basics wrong and your wonderful stuff won't even be seen or heard.
The problem I have (voice & presentation skills trainer) is that people never believe that it could happen to them until it does! Horror stories about other people seem not to work.....
S
Posted by: Simon Raybould | March 18, 2007 11:33 AM