{"id":562,"date":"2010-01-25T10:24:10","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T09:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elementally.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=562"},"modified":"2010-01-25T10:24:10","modified_gmt":"2010-01-25T09:24:10","slug":"is-this-thing-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/is-this-thing-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Is this thing on?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I used to think it was a (bad) joke when I heard presenters checking the microphone was turned on by asking if it was. If it is, or course, the whole audience can hear you asking and your credibility takes a tumble before you even start. If it isn&#8217;t, no one knows you&#8217;re asking in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>Microphones seem to panic people, but every professional (or anyone wanting to look professional!) will do a few simple checks before the audience arrive&#8230;. not while they&#8217;re filing in. Doing that has got to list amongst the highest crimes against presentation skills!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Check what kind of a mic you&#8217;re expected to use. Lectern Mics are probably the most robust but also the most limiting. Radio mics can be hand-held (a nightmare if you&#8217;re not used to it) or lavalier (button). The latter is preferable unless you&#8217;ve practiced with microphones&#8230; and even then it&#8217;s probably the better option as a speaker.<\/li>\n<li>Check if you need to use a Mic. Some times it&#8217;s just not worth the angst. Do that checking before your audience arrive though, and remember that when people come into a room they&#8217;ll absorb sound, so what might have been loud enough in rehearsal isn&#8217;t loud enough in performance.<\/li>\n<li>Check the batteries. Amongst theatre professionals, microphones are notorious for eating up batteries and most places will change batteries between shows &#8211; every show. It might be wasteful but at least it&#8217;s secure: I mean no disrespect to your venues here to suggest that they might not have the same protocol. If in doubt, take your own batteries with you; if you&#8217;re worried about the environmental impact, take re-chargeable ones (remembering they go flat faster, so charge them fully!)<\/li>\n<li>Check where the loud-speakers are. Don&#8217;t walk in front of them with your microphone or you&#8217;ll get that horrible howling sound called &#8216;feedback&#8217;. (Seriously &#8211; I&#8217;ve seen professionals do this!)<\/li>\n<li>Check you know how to turn it on and off and that you&#8217;ve agreed with whoever is running things who is going to control the on\/off &#8211; you or the person on the sound desk! You&#8217;d be surprised at how much chaos you can create simply by turning a microphone off at the wrong moment!<\/li>\n<li>Check if you&#8217;re going to be recorded. If you are, you&#8217;ll have to wear a microphone, obviously, but that <strong>doesn&#8217;t<\/strong> automatically mean that you must have your voice fed through the speakers: it&#8217;s perfectly possible for your voice to be recorded without being broadcast! If you don&#8217;t want to be broadcast over the speakers, make sure you&#8217;re not, whether you&#8217;re being recorded or not.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Okay, so none of that is exactly rocket science&#8230;it&#8217;s the most basic of presentation skills&#8230; but believe me, it&#8217;s important. How do I know? Well you&#8217;ve no idea how many presentations I&#8217;ve cringed through! :)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I used to think it was a (bad) joke when I heard presenters checking the microphone was turned on by asking if it was. If it is, or course, the whole audience can hear you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presentation-tips","category-voice-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562","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=562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}