Don't let technical difficulties derail your presentation
At some point, you will have a presentation that gets derailed due to technical difficulties. It’s just a numbers game - you do enough presentations, and statistically some of them will involve a malfunctioning device, a file that can’t be opened, or a bad internet connection. You can’t stop technology from being unreliable, but you CAN take steps so that you can stay in control when mishaps inevitably occur.
Story time: I’m the lead communications trainer for an organization that provides intensive training programs to non-profit professionals. I once had planned a fun, multi-media warm-up for a morning session on Zoom. It was first thing in the morning. I said to the group “let’s dance!”, shared my sound through Zoom, and turned on C&C Music Factory’s “Gonna Make You Sweat”. It should have been glorious. But I was travelling at the time, and my internet connection was terrible.So instead of an energizing ice-breaker on a Monday morning, we had 50 very confused interns trying to dance to an extremely choppy rendition of a classic ‘90s dance hit. Not great!
I’ve had slide decks that were lost because the USB drive malfunctioned somewhere between my house and the venue for my talk. I’ve had web-based slide decks crash multiple times in the same presentation. I’ve had my computer spontaneously shut itself off in the middle of teaching a virtual workshop. Along the way, I‘ve learned a few things about what to do and what not to do.
Here are my top 3 tips.
First, prevention. Ideally, if you need any materials for your presentation - slide deck, speaking notes, etc. - you should have multiple copies of them, stored in different places, and ideally held by different people. For example, if you’re using a slide deck, you should have a copy on your device, a copy on a USB drive, a copy emailed to yourself, and a copy emailed to the event host in advance. This has saved me on multiple occasions, when I needed a backup and had one readily available.
Having a tech mishap is embarrassing, especially in a professional setting. But when you have a Plan B ready to go and you transition smoothly to it, people will actually be impressed by how pulled-together you are and how cool you are under pressure.
That brings me to tip #2: just take a breath and let it go. The worst thing you can do in these cases is to fixate on the issue. Don’t profusely apologize for the technical difficulties. Everyone knows that these things happen. Like I mentioned, it’s bound to happen to you at some point because it happens to everybody. That means people are more understanding than you think. When the technical issue arises, don’t spend too much time trying to fix it. If basic troubleshooting isn’t working, move on as best you can.
I once was presenting a virtual public speaking workshop for a client, and my web-based slide deck crashed once…twice…three times. Then my computer randomly shut itself off. So here’s what I did: I re-joined the Zoom call from my phone. I said “hey everybody, really sorry - I don’t know what just happened there.” I asked the host to share the slide deck for me, I pulled out my printed workshop outline - because remember, we always have multiple copies of our materials - and I kept going. Part of the feedback I got was, “I couldn’t believe how easily you kept going after your technical difficulties!”
So many people freak out and start to spiral when their tech melts down, because we have this idea that everything has to be perfect or we’ve failed. When you let go of that idea and commit fully to doing the best you can with what you’ve got, you don’t freak out. You stay calm and pull it off, which wins people’s trust and wins their respect.
How exactly do you do that? It gets a lot easier when you use tip #3: know your content really well beforehand.
If you know your presentation inside and out, you will have no issue continuing without your slides or notes. Now, I know this sounds really obvious, and - well, yes. I am telling you to practice your presentation. Practice it out loud, practice it in front of real people - or at least your cat - and practice it under conditions that are as close as you can manage to the conditions under which you’ll do the actual delivery.
But you don’t need to memorize your presentation. You need to know it, and that’s different. When you know your content, you can explain it to your friends over dinner at a restaurant. You can explain it to your parents. A great way to know your content really well in the long term is to come up with templates, analogies, modules, etc., that you can use over and over again. You don’t need to re-invent the wheel every time you present. Think about the things you’re asked to teach or communicate about over and over again. Put together an inventory of explanations, analogies, messaging, discussion prompts, etc., that you can mix and match for any occasion. Once you’ve got this, it makes preparing for a presentation so much easier, and even if you have a complete tech meltdown you’ll be fine - because you know exactly what to say.
Listen, I know technical issues during presentations can be scary and intimidating, and they can really, uh, “make you sweat”. But if you remember these tips - keep multiple copies, work with what you’ve got, and know your material really well - you can handle anything.
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