Don't be a technology dinosaur

I attended a conference last weekend where several speakers had technology issues that could easily have been solved in advance if they had any idea how their technology worked.

One speaker's Skype notification box kept popping up in the middle of his slide show, letting us all know the name of his friend who was online. He approached it with good humor and we all had a laugh... but no one made an effort to turn it off, including the AV guy who was running the show.

Another speaker's computer kept going to sleep -- every minute. She would be in the middle of talking about, or reading from, a web page and the screen would go blank. This went on for probably 20 minutes until finally, several audience members interrupted and gave her instructions for how to change her settings.

This speaker also continually looked down at her computer, pointing to things on her monitor that she wanted us to see, instead of pointing to them on the projection screen. It was very odd. She also asked audience members to read aloud from the screen, which caused problems as they were facing the screen, not the audience, and thus were difficult to hear.

One speaker actually said, when it came time to advance his first slide, "Now how do I do this?"

Seriously, people?

If there's one little technology glitch, the audience can get past it and the speaker can move on. But when there are multiple issues, it becomes very distracting, disturbs the flow of the presentation and frustrates the audience.

Two speakers were showing websites as part of their presentations and had multiple tabs open at the top of the screen -- one had her personal banking tab showing. Because the window was not in full screen mode, a good chunk of space at the top of the screen was taken up with toolbars and tabs. The text on the screen was very small, yet we were expected to be able to read it. And the speaker had to keep scrolling up and down to find the text and images she wanted.

Here are two examples of how I would have made this a better visual for the audience.

1. First, there's the F11 key (this apparently only works on a PC). If you've never used it, find it at the top of your keyboard and press it now. See how it puts your computer into full screen mode? All those tabs and toolbars go away and all you see is the working part of the screen. Now press it again to make your tabs come back. This is a quick and easy way to take away the distractions.

2. But what if you don't need to click on live links at all? Is there any reason to have actual websites open when instead you can use screenshots in PowerPoint and, instead of jumping from tab to tab, just advance your slides? This also makes it easier to highlight parts of the screen you want to show, instead of showing everything.

Here's an example from my computer. First is the screenshot (of Kim and Jason's site -- why not?) the way you would see it if I were presenting using the Web.

Click image to open larger size in a new tab - when you get there, click again for full size

Here's the screenshot after using the F11 key:

Click image to open larger size in a new tab - when you get there, click again for full size

Now here's what it would look like if I just made it into a PowerPoint slide:

Click image to open larger size in a new tab - when you get there, click again for full size

Now I'm able to create exactly the image I want, and advance slides in the order I want instead of having to click tabs and scroll down a web page until I get to the right place on the page.

Mind you, this doesn't solve the problem of the tiny text that the speaker wanted us to read, but that's a whole other story.

If you know you're going to be using PowerPoint; if you know you're going to be demonstrating a website; if you know you're going to be using your own computer, and you have notifications that pop up; please -- for the sake of your audience -- prepare yourself properly. Take the time to understand the technology you're using, and take the time to smooth out the bumps before you get in front of an audience.

That also goes for describing or explaining technology to your audience when you don't understand it. As was the case with one of the speakers trying to explain subscribing to an RSS feed vs. receiving blog posts by e-mail. She didn't know what she was talking about, and audience members had to come to the rescue to clarify.

Not having a grasp of the technology you're using makes you look like an amateur, it makes your presentation less effective, and it interferes with your core message. Technology is a practical and useful tool for modern speakers -- don't be the dinosaur in the room.

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