Living with Gremlins

I operated the slideshow for a speaker at our Toastmasters District Contest last week. We took the expected steps that all prudent presenters take:

1. Rehearse with the slideshow before the live presentation.
2. Check, double check and triple check that the PowerPoint is working correctly, that the laptop is plugged in and not on battery power, that all screensavers are disabled, yada, yada,...
3. Test that the projectors are working.
4. Leave the laptop on a black slide, ready to switch to the next slide when the slide show is advanced.

Murphy says "Something will go wrong at the worst possible moment". I couldn't believe this. The cable to the projectors was laid under the stage. The projectors flickered as speakers used the stage. When my colleague got up to speak and stood on the suspect location on the stage, the cable disconnected from the projectors - resulting in the end of the slide show.

Can you believe it? I don't know if the cable chafed through, merely became loose, or was cut in half by an invisible chainsaw. The net result was the same. All of our preparation was blown in one instant because with the cable running under the stage we could not troubleshoot during the presentation.

You never know what gremlin will creep into your presentation. All that you can do is be prepared to speak-on, sans your slideshow.