Written May 2010
by Cliff Feldwick
We’ve all seen it: the presentation brought to a screeching halt by someone fiddling with a computer trying to get a PowerPoint presentation up and running.
Perhaps the only thing worse is when it does work and the speaker, acting as if no one in the room knows how to read, mimics the words on the screen in perfect partnership, stopping only to fumble with the control when changing slides. Add in the occasional background music that comes and goes, usually too loud, and you have Death by PowerPoint.
This comes to mind because of a series of incidents at my Rotary club, where well meaning presenters spent much too much time fooling with the mechanics and forgot the message. The last one to make it work perfectly was a Naval Academy graduate in engineering – if he couldn’t, then all hope is lost. He also used an app on his iPhone to make it change slides – just showing off, for sure.
Usually the presenter will come early and set up with the projector hooked to the laptop, make it work (maybe) and go blissfully off to breakfast. The computer will, of course, go into hibernation while they are gone. Why anyone sets up hibernation on a unit that is running off a power cord and not the battery is beyond me, but they do. So it’s dead, and they try to revive it. Fiddle with mouse, then keyboard. One recently woke up and went into the “found new hardware” (the projector) loop, while in basic big-screen mode that only showed about one-quarter of what was normal. As “the computer guy” in the room, I am always called to thump on the chest of this catastrophe, while the speaker looks plaintively over their shoulder at the progress or lack thereof. As the computer blissfully asks if it’s OK to download the drivers, things further deteriorate. Sometimes (not enough) it can be revived, and then the speaker acts as if time had stopped and they can then proceed from the beginning, ignoring the fact that people have to actually go to work, The only effective cure for this, I’ve found, is to firmly snap the screen closed on the laptop and walk away, leaving the speaker to actually speak.
Why this lament? Because it’s an excellent example of technology overcoming the original purpose, which used to be to illuminate a talk with slides, talking points or other information that complemented the story. Now the flash is the presentation.
One of the best speakers I’ve heard, Michael Caruso, boasts that he uses only one slide in his entire talk. Actually, I can’t remember the slide, but I’m betting it comes at the end and lists his name, phone and website. The rest of the time is spent actually facing the audience, making eye contact and engaging people with his message. What a concept.
So here’s the challenge: if you present to a group, think about what you would do if everything went wrong. Power outage, computer failure, whatever. Could you still deliver your message? Are you relying on the unreliable? If so, you need to re-focus on what counts – the words and how they affect your audience. Amazing how much more effective you will be.
Rumble, rumble
Newer laptops often have a device, an accelerometer, built in to detect when the unit has been dropped or knocked severely. If so, if protects the hard drive by closing down, hopefully before it hits the floor.
In an interesting case of unintended uses, a University of California geophysicist has developed a program, available for download, which uses these sensors to see when there is an earthquake and deliver this information to a central station. It’s crude when compared to real seismometers, of course, but if enough are used at the same time it can pinpoint the location and severity of a quake, maybe in enough time to warn people at a distance (too bad if you’re at the center, I suppose – then you just get to add data).
The program is available at the Quake Catcher Network at http://qcn.stanford.edu. If you don’t have such a laptop, there’s an external USB-connected accelerometer available for purchase. They’re asking people to purchase one for a school as well. Software that teaches about earthquakes is part of the package, although if you’re in California you probably know a lot already. They’d like to get 10,000 people in the network but have about 9000 to go. Maybe not what your computer was intended for, but remarkable anyway.
I’m reminded of the story told by a friend who lives outside San Francisco, of sitting in his car and feeling a massive trembling. He looked around, saw buildings shaking, and said “Thank goodness – for a moment I thought there was something wrong with the car”.
All depends on what you’re used to, I guess.