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Technology is out to get you - honest!

Or to put it another way: KISS. (Keep it Simple, Stupid!) The more there is, the more there is to go wrong. Simple, I know, but you’d be amazed at how often even the most simple of things can mess you around: sometimes it feels as though the machines really are out to get you and we’re only one step away from them taking over. Over the last month, for example, I’ve seen:

• a laptop without enough processing power to project a DVD – the key point of the presentation – but which worked fine before the projector was attached
• a laptop where the screensaver cut in, half way through the presentation
• a presenter who read from a script (yuk!) but who then dropped it and didn’t have the pages numbered
• a microphone in which the battery died
• a screen with a twist so that all the images and text on it were distorted
• a presenter wearing a lapel-microphone who walked in front of a speaker, causing a physically painful howling
• a PowerPoint file saved in a format that was too new to be read by the conference’s machine

Remember, for each bit of technology you use, you more than double the number of “tech-checks” you need to do because you’ve got to test how your different bits of technology interact, too. Even after making hundreds of presentations, we still rely on the most basic of technologies for our checks – a written list and a pencil to tick things off… airline pilots do it that way for a reason!

I’d like to hear your stories too, and I’ll add any new ones to our in-house checklist and publish it in a subsequent Talk Tuesday! (sme@curved-vision.co.uk)

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .