Adventures in presentations

Having a good sense of humor is a wonderful gift.  It can help ward off stressful situations at times or at least minimize them. 

I had an adventure this week that was quite humorous, or at least I saw it that way.  I had to give a presentation.  I let the folks know in advance what I would need (computer with web access, PowerPoint program, and speakers set up).  I also asked if I would need to bring my laptop or use a flash drive instead -- and if the presentation set up didn't include speakers, etc. to let me know.  I'd modify my presentation.  No problem.

Well, I arrived at the place 15 minutes early to set things up.  I had my flash drive and saved the presentation as both a PowerPoint file and as a PowerPoint show file (that's the safest option if you have strange fonts, which I didn't).  My host logged on to the computer, and I waited for it to boot up.  And waited.  After it booted up, I started to open a web page and open my presentation.  And waited.  And things didn't move.  Well, sort of.  The web browser would load, but wouldn't load a web site.  My host got their tech personnel on the situation right away.  The tech personnel couldn't get that computer to work, so they brought out a laptop.

During this time, I went to the restroom and when I returned from the restroom, I greeted the presentation attendees.  Better to stay calm and it's not as if my standing over the tech support guys would fix anything.  Oh, but it gets better!

Now, I love laptops.  But, as my close friends know, I'm a lefty.  Yup, Southpaw Central.  Our tech folks gripe every time they have to work on the machine in my office while in my office or on my laptop, 'cause everything is set up for a lefty.  This laptop was set up for righties and the Control Panel feature was not present.  So I couldn't switch mouse buttons.  Okay.  Okay.  I asked the tech guy about speakers.  He got the deer in the headlights look. He offered to get speakers, but it would take a few minutes.  I looked at my host and I looked at the clock.  We were already well into my presentation time.  I grinned and said, it's okay.  I'll live.  We need to get this show on the road.

I fumbled with the buttons quite a few times and joked about being a lefty in a right-handed universe.

When I got to my musical examples, including a video from the web, I joked that "if we had speakers, you would be listening to ..."  I remembered the tune for the second example and sang that.  The audience laughed. 

And then I tried to use the felt tip pen feature in PowerPoint to show certain words in a screen shot.  It hadn't been installed.  Well, turned that off.  Didn't want to hold up the presentation because of that.  And attempted to laugh that off.

I think the presentation went well, all things considered.  Again, a good sense of humor helps.  But also, things rarely go as planned, even when you think they might.  You can plan all you want, communicate as much as possible, and things still slip through the cracks. 

That's life.  I'd rather laugh than cry.  Assuming I can breathe.

Comments

[mosker]

It is not the left-handedness that is a problem when we work on your laptop. After all, there are a number of lefties in the organization, so we have learned to go with that. No, the problem with yours is that you change the orientation so that up is not up. In order to move the cursor straight up on the screen, one must move across the touchpad up and to the right.

That, my friend, is disconcerting.

After all, I can't let you have the world thinking I am biased against lefties!

I'm so glad the presentation went well, once it got going. Congratulations.