Here's a piece from Money magazine that gives advice on what to do during potential awkward moments in your work career. Today they give advice on what to do if the computer with your PowerPoint slides malfunctions in the middle of a presentation:
Don't fiddle with your computer in front of an audience. If it's not fixed in two minutes, ask for a short recess.
Use humor. The audience will be as uncomfortable about your contretemps as you, so loosen everyone up with a joke.
Don't dwell on what happened. And certainly don't overapologize.
Tip: Bring enough hard copies for everyone in attendance.
I ALWAYS bring a back up disk with the presentation (in case my computer fries and they have another one I can use to do the presentation). If there are 10 or less people and it's not a big presentation, I'll bring hard copies for everyone as well. If there are more, I bring two hard copies and figure if we need to break so I can make additional copies, that wouldn't be the worst thing to happen.
How do you prepare for a potential emergency like this? Have you ever had your presentation go down and not be able to get it back up? Please share the details via comments!
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