Making Your Presentation Technology ''Stealthy''

By Jim Endicott, Owner/Manager of Distinction

Just recently I returned from the Presentations 2000 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. What's noteworthy about this event was not necessarily the attendance. Presentation 2000's second year as a conference shared the venue with Training 2000 (a sister publication) and only contributed 400 or so of the 2,500 conference attendees. What's truly significant in this, however, is the fact that the whole category of presentation design and delivery has finally risen to national convention status. Business professionals all around the United States are coming to the stark realization that the presentations they deliver can no longer be an afterthought - the orphan child of their Marketing Communication departments. Careers, sales contracts, reputations, professional status, training effectiveness and individual credibility often hang in the balance as we struggle to shape and craft a cohesive presentation story and deliver it with some measure of uniqueness.

I must admit, since I live and breathe this topic as a career I often forget that as a personal development category, it's only now starting to take on a broader legitimacy and acceptance. Not simply the stand and deliver piece but the content formation, design tools and finally a good understanding of the underlying technologies. A decade ago there was precious little new in the area of presentation hardware. Laptops were still out of reach for the average presenter and what was available in the area of electronic display devices were outrageously expensive and offered little advantage over a good set of slides and an overhead projector. Not a heck of a lot could go wrong with the traditional alternatives either - a slide jams now and then or your stack of carefully organized overhead transparencies fall on the floor. In any event, having to resort to reading a manual was an unheard-of concept.

Today, most business presenters look at the hardware they tote from presentation to presentation as simply an enabling tool as well they should - enabling others to share your thoughts and ideas and enabling you to leverage the power of your computer in creating media-rich messages. I'm guessing you may not care much about things like DLP, polysilicon or amorphous projection technologies because your goal is just a clean, bright image with no hassle. When things go smoothly, the set up is quick, the images crisp and the supporting equipment becomes transparent to the whole process of presenting. This is truly the art of presenting at it's very best when we can forget about connectivity of wires and cables and concentrate on connecting concepts and ideas with our audiences. If you are working with dated technology the former will almost always overwhelm the later.

Contrast that with those moments that we've all had where things went terribly wrong. Resolutions wouldn't sync up just moments before the big presentation or a laptop computer locks up stone cold in the middle of the big pitch. Whatever your particular horror story, we find that we've just been upstaged by power supplies, microchips and memory. It's one thing when we simply get out-presented, it's quite another when we don't even get up to bat before frustration sets in.

There are a few things you can do to make sure that your technology does not upstage your next presentation:

1. Know your laptop computer inside and out

• How to change screen resolution and what are the trade-offs (black border?)
• How much RAM do you have? - Upgrade to 96MB+ to minimize "lock-up"
• Know how to quickly toggle between internal, external or dual monitor displays
• Know where to adjust external volume from your laptop computer
• Learn how to connect two laptops for quick transfer of data (Try tools like PCAnywhere)

  2. Know your electronic projector from the bottom up

• Get comfortable with menu items like an Auto Image or Image Size adjustment - know when to use them
• Know how to quickly toggle between data and video sources
• Know the limits of the small sound speakers to support larger audience sizes
• Understand the lighting situations that challenge the brightness of your projector and adjust the room accordingly

  3. Make your remote pointing device an invisible extension to your arm

• Keep a fresh set of batteries handy
• Use a device that provides the smallest possible profile in your hand
• Learn how to use your remote without the audience knowing - avoid blatant pointing
• Know your angle and distance limitations for line-of-sight with IR devices
• Understand what lighting conditions could adversely affect the remote's performance
• Practice with it until it "disappears" in your hand

Learn more about Jim Endicott and Distinction in our Contributors area.