PowerPoint and the power failure

While I'm moving this week, I've invited some of my favorite public speaking and communications bloggers to guest post here on Speak Schmeak. Please enjoy this post by Laura Bergells, from her blog, More Than PowerPoint. Follow her on Twitter: @maniactive.

The thing about electronic gizmos is that they can -- and will -- fail you.

At any time. Without any notice.

In the past month, I've been without electricity itself...twice. Power failures were all the rage during last week's heat wave.

If electrical failure has not happened to you yet in your life -- it will.

That's why you need to plan on some kind of presentation-related electrical failure. It will happen frequently in your lifetime.

A computer's hard drive will crash during an important PowerPoint presentation.
A remote will go kaput just when you need to advance slides.
Your microphone will start inexplicably screeching mid-speech.
The bulb in your projector will suddenly burn out....

Count on it. Plan for electrical failure with every presentation. Develop and rehearse your PowerPoint backup plan.

Because when you plan on electrical failure, you're actaully planning on presentation success.

Why? Because if you count on electrical failure, you have a contingency plan. You learn to count on yourself. You focus on connecting with your audience , and not the electronic gizmos.

When you learn to communicate successfully without electricity, and you'll be a better, more confident presenter.... even when you eventually have access to the fully functional electrical gizmos.

Or as Garr Reynolds' writes at his masterful blog, learn to present naked! (In this hellishly hot weather, who would blame you?)

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