{"id":3200,"date":"2015-03-11T20:56:49","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T20:56:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=3200"},"modified":"2015-03-11T21:05:45","modified_gmt":"2015-03-11T21:05:45","slug":"a-comedy-of-presentation-errors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/a-comedy-of-presentation-errors\/","title":{"rendered":"A comedy of presentation errors&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of my favourite rules for presenting is (with apologies to the plenty of great places to work out there) simply to &#8220;Never trust the venue&#8221;. Here&#8217;s why&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I arrived at 8:15 or a 9:30 start. Reception had no knowledge of the booking. I showed here the email I had from her venue, at which point she went for the manager. Sadly the manager didn&#8217;t start work until nine, which I felt didn&#8217;t give me time to set up or (heaven forbid!) get to a different venue in time if it was my mistake. \u00a0 I was sure it wasn&#8217;t as I&#8217;d got their confirmation emails, don&#8217;t forget.<\/li>\n<li>I asked &#8220;If the event is here, where do you think it would be? I&#8217;d like to risk setting up&#8221;. There&#8217;s only one possible room it could be. No key. Stress. Key found. Door unlocked. Venue set up for a small wedding party of 15 or so from yesterday, not the significantly bigger numbers my client had told me to expect.<\/li>\n<li>I start setting up and the manager arrives. She&#8217;s more interested in who let me in the room without her permission than the fact that the venue&#8217;s not sorted out. I end up resorting to something like &#8220;Do you think it would be possible to sort out responsibility\u00a0later? \u00a0Right now we need an extra 30 chairs, to move the tables and to find a screen of some kind!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Much panic ensues as we realise there are no portering staff on duty. I set up my kit while\u00a0everyone and her dog is roped in to move chair in the meantime. Chairs fly everywhere, behind me. I ignore them all, except the one that clips me on the knee as it is pushed passed me.<\/li>\n<li>We discover that the fluffy white nylon backdrop for the wedding can&#8217;t come down and has to stay there all through my presentation. I ask if, at the very least, the fairy lights can be removed. Even Barbie would blush at how naff it is.<\/li>\n<li>No power &#8211; their extension cable isn&#8217;t working. The one I&#8217;ve brought in case of emergencies is already committed to powering the camera and microphone because they only have one and the gig needs two. \u00a0An emergency \u00a0replacement extension is found &#8211; brand new. Great. But it&#8217;s only five metres long and the power socket is six metres away. An additional extension is found and they&#8217;re plugged into each other.<\/li>\n<li>I idly muse to myself about health and safety and covers for the curly white extension cable snaking randomly over the floor as a result of their fuss and decide I&#8217;m a sufficient pro I can remember to step over things rather than cause more fuss. I dig out my gaffa tape and fasten things down to make less of a death trap. The manager is concerned about the damage I&#8217;m apparently doing to her (bloody awful) carpet.<\/li>\n<li>Teas and coffees arrive at 9:20 ready for the break <strong>in an hour and a half<\/strong>. I ask if they&#8217;re going to stay warm. They realise they won&#8217;t and take them away.<\/li>\n<li>The audience arrive and I do the swan thing &#8211; let no one see how hard you&#8217;re paddling.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Oh yeah, my life is soooo rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll! :)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of my favourite rules for presenting is (with apologies to the plenty of great places to work out there) simply to &#8220;Never trust the venue&#8221;. Here&#8217;s why&#8230; I arrived at 8:15 or a 9:30 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3201,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3200"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3204,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3200\/revisions\/3204"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}