Oh, the irony!

I've been quite liberal in my derision of poor Powerpoint presentations. But Mr. Smarty-Pants stepped in it big-time this week.

I appreciate an excellent presentation. At meetings or rounds, I really enjoy a speaker who has taken the time to put his/her audience first. Who makes sure the audiovisual material is appealing and appropriate. Who checks that all the necessary equipment is available and functional.

I like to give a good presentation. And I cringe when something goes wrong. Like earlier this week.

I was invited to present our Advanced Access project to the annual meeting of the Saskatchewan Association of Health Organizations in Regina. I was excited to be asked and put a lot of work into the presentation.

I used lots of graphics and photos, and kept text to a minimum. (Only one bullet point slide out of 42!) I stuck to 3 main points. I included some video clips to illustrate my points.

And that's where the wheels came off the wagon.

There was no speaker system to amplify the sound from my laptop. It wasn't a big room, but people at the back couldn't hear the clips. What better way to have your audience's attention wander?

To make it worse, one of the themes of my presentation was "It's all about your audience". I was trying to apply the metaphor of a performer and his audience to the concept of patient and family-centred care in our Advanced Access project. I went on and on about how important it is to think about what engages and entertains your audience (or what's important for your patient). Then, I play the video clips and half the audience can't hear them.

Just to balance my karma, another theme was "Do it", meaning, don't be afraid to try new things and fail at them, because it's always a chance to learn from mistakes. This was the first time I'd included a lot of video clips, so it was a nice demonstration of how to screw up when you try something new. Irony was having a field day.

My first inclination was to blame the conference organizers. I'd given them plenty of notice that I needed to plug into an audio system, but nothing was provided. But, I have to take responsibility myself. I've often seen speakers stymied when they couldn't get a computer or projector going, and thought "That's pathetic that you are so reliant on your slides to speak about this topic. You should be prepared for tech glitches." It was my turn to be stymied.

For next time, I'll have to see about getting a small, portable speaker that I can connect to my laptop. Oh, geez, I just had an esprit de l'escalier moment: I should have taken off my lapel mike and laid it on the laptop's speaker!

Anyway, thanks to everyone who was kind enough to come to my presentation. Sorry for the glitch. Try me again and I'll have it fixed.