You can brainstorm. You can clarify. You can practice, night after night, until you could deliver like Meryl Streep in Steel Magnolias. You can plan a light show, a multimedia masterpiece, and an audience giveaway that would make Oprah look like Ebeneezer Scrooge.
If you don’t have a presentation to give when the moment arrives, it doesn’t matter. You flopped. I once heard it said that if the projector bulb dies, it is your fault. If your laptop battery oozes lithium ion into your luggage, it is your fault. If the clicker doesn’t click, your fault. And so forth.
Tech-savvy presenters can go through many presentations without a hitch. A majority of the risks associated with getting your presentation up onto a projector screen on the other side of the country can be controlled by simply understanding how to save, load, and manage your files.
But everyone is going to encounter an unforeseen catastrophe someday. When it happens, one of two situations will become reality: either you will lose that opportunity and perhaps others, or your deft handling of misfortune will make you look even cooler than if you had delivered the original presentation. So how do you ensure the latter?
It starts with basic preparation: save your files in a few different places–flash drive, CD, DVD, whatever–and move beyond physical storage. Services like Dropbox, SlideRocket, SlideShare, and more provide the opportunity to put your deck in a non-physical location. If your suitcase is run over by a Mack truck, all you’d need is an internet connection to carry on.
Then, you have the compatibility issues. This one’s simple: always export your PowerPoint or Keynote files as a PDF, too. Your presentation can travel around the cyber world with a fraternal twin; if one succumbs to file corruption, or cannot thrive in a certain version of PowerPoint, you’ll be able to at least display the PDF version on any computer around.
Finally, consider investing in a smartphone device capable of running presentation software. iPads, iPhones, and probably some of the Android devices are now capable of this, and if you have the wires to connect to a projector, you’re in business no matter what. At this point, the only layer of additional protection is carrying a flip chart with you and mastering that delivery style, too. But really, I think you’re covered.
Question: Have you ever witnessed a horror story unfolding on stage? What happened?
