How NOT to present

I’m at the UKOUOG this week and, as ever, the presentations vary in quality. Most are excellent {or even better than that}, some are not. I was in one first thing this morning and, I have to say, it was rushed, garbled, unclear and there was a definite air of unease and panic. I’m not even sure the guy got to his big point and I could think of at least three major things he did not mention at all.

I think his main problem was just starting off in a rush and never settling down. You see, I was stuck on the top floor of my Hotel and had to run to the venue. Yes, the poor presentation was by me :-(.

I usually present well {modesty forbids me from saying I am a very good presenter – but modesty can take a hike, my ego knows I am capable of giving great presentations}. I am one of those lucky people for whom presenting has never been particularly frightening and, in fact, I find it easier to present to a group of people than talk with them.

But not today. I was already worried about the session, have been for weeks, as I was doing interactive demos. But last night I ran through it, wrote down the names of the scripts and the slide numbers so I could just bang through them and timed it all. 50 mins, I would skip one unneeded section. Calm. I got a reasonable night’s sleep, got up early and ran through it all one more time, making sure my Big Point demo worked. And it did. Yes.

Went down to breakfast, had breakfast and back to the room to pick up my stuff. And realised I was late. Less than 10 minutes to do the 5 minutes over to the venue. So I fled the room, stuffing my laptop in my bag. But not my notes. Or my conference pass. I did not think of this as I stood on the top floor of the hotel, I just thought “where are the lifts?”. They were all below me, ferrying hungry people to and from breakfast. After what seemed like an hour and was only 4 or 5 minutes I decided 16 flights of stairs was OK to go down and, to give me credit, I managed those stairs and the few hundred yards to the venue in pretty good time. I did pause for a few seconds at floor 7, I think, when I remembered my notes. Too late.

But I was now panicked and arrived as a dash. I had to mess about with the Audio Visual guy to get going and started 2 mins past my slot start – and then did the 5 minutes of non-relevant stuff I had decided to drop. It was game over from there, I was failing to find the correct scripts, I was skipping relevant sections and I was blathering instead of just taking a few seconds to calm down and concentrate.

Oh well, my first time in a large room at the UKOUG and I messed up. At least I had the key lesson drummed into me. TURN UP EARLY!!!!