By Peter Cochrane, 25 November 2008 09:00
COMMENT
Written on KLM1508 flying from Amsterdam to Norwich, and dispatched to silicon.com from London via a free wi-fi service
Several times over the past decades I have contemplated writing a book detailing all the things that can go wrong when making presentations but as time moved on I realised it would be a never-ending story.
With each new raft of technology comes a new breed of SNAFU. Over the past 40 years I have seen people fall off the stage, projectors burst into flame, audiovisual interference from taxis and police, screens collapse, applications crash, and people freeze mid-sentence. The list is endless and rapidly growing!
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Of late I have witnessed a new subset of SNAFUs: the intelligent projector and application. You can test your setup multiple times but as soon as the audience is seated then the gremlins strike. Movies refuse to run, or run without sound. Spurious error messages pop onto the screen. Trusted applications freeze without warning. And worst of all, the projector refuses to talk to the laptop.
Fortunately I do not use the same OS or applications as most of the victims of this 'e-perversity' but this stuff still makes me nervous! It seems these problems are always lurking in the background, waiting to get us when we are least prepared.
I always stretch the technology to the limit with animations, movies and sound files, and this has to increase the probability of failure by virtue of introducing new modes. But what I am witnessing seems to be failure without discernable patterns.
As an engineer I am more than thorough in my testing of systems but gremlins still break through from time to time. What really bugs me is the prospect of unrepeatable failure modes because they are by far the hardest to pin down and cure.
After a recent and repeated loss of sound during a presentation to an audience of more than 400 people, I decided to investigate. It turned out to be a software problem with a faulty plug-in dropping in and out at random. A rapid software reinstall fixed it but without identifying why it failed in the first place.
This I find very frustrating but I found a cure! I have abandoned the most commonly used, industry-standard presentation software for something far more reliable.
Despite all of this, I have to ask: is there more to come? As clients get thinner and software packages become more lightweight, I suspect a lot of people will be adopting my solution, or some variant of it.
But the real fun will start when the more adventurous among us try to present using online applications. This will surely be the biggest opportunity for a new range of SNAFUs!
Comments
There are 8 comments. Join the discussion
1. Rory Choudhuri
We know what OS you use, but I'm interested in your presentation solution. Is it keynote, pdfs, or something else?
2. Andrea Coppini
C'mon Pete, tell us! We're mere victims just like you...
3. Simon Allen
"the intelligent projector and application"
There is the answer!!!! The salesmen asked their developers to make the system 'fool proof' and 'work right out of the box' and all that jazz. So ... EACH item in the chain tries to be intelligent and second guesses the other components. The result is GOING to be a failure.
When electronic projectors first started, people would know what settings were needed and then ask for them to be set. If they did not know the settings, the options were very few. Now there is a plethora of frame and pixel sizes and it will have to be bad for a while longer before people realise that having everything dumb and manual, lets you set and forget.
I have seen a presentation set up and tested but fail 30 mins later because the person did not realise that he blank screen was the PC gone into sleep mode. So they re-booted the PC and that took ages. The real real sadness was - this was in a funeral, about to show a video of the man who had died and what would have been poignant was awful.
4. David Palmer
Hi Peter,
I thought you were going to tell the story of the speech you gave us in Knebworth when your laptop wouldn't talk properly to the projector (kit value over 2 grand) . . . until I wheeled in the £100 OHP (because you had the slides on OHP film as a back-up) and suddenly all was well!
cheers,
David
5. Peter Cochrane
Roy = Keynote is my favourite by far - but Neo Office seems quite stable too. Peter
6. Peter Cochrane
Andrea = I am exclusively Mac! Peter
7. Peter Cochrane
Simon = How sad - a gotcha even when you are in the grave. I hope they stop after that!! Peter
8. Peter Cochrane
David = All part of the learning curve that would be detailed in a book! I always operate like the military - I always have a second strike capability ready. But I did a session in the House of Commons not so long ago when I couldn't even get electrical power - down to faulty wiring. So I just talked! Peter