I’ve seen it so many times. A technical distraction takes the speaker into a different world. I remember filming a class when a professor’s laptop died. He forgot his power supply and ran it off the battery. When his laptop shut off, so did he.
He couldn’t operate with out it. He didn’t even know where he was in the lecture. What have I covered? What’s next?
Today in my presentation my Keynote crashed. I restarted it and it crashed again. The giggling students in the back were real encouraging. I would have been laughing too. I restarted the computer and it crashed again. Why?
I am still a believer in Keynote and my experience has been much better than PowerPoint. This is the first time that Keynote has caused this problem for me. PowerPoint did this to me more often than not. And usually when it died, it took the computer down with it.
I don’t know if I kept my cool and I don’t remember if it threw me off. Unfortunately we video tapes the event and I will have a record of my mistakes.
What have a I learned? Preparation must take into account contingency. Do I know my presentation well enough to run without it? Am I versed enough in the topic to handle it alone? Can I troubleshoot my laptop and get it back up and running without interrupting the class? Do I have a backup system?
Tonight I will present the same material. I will spend a few hours with my system beforehand trying to troubleshoot the problem. I will probably also have a second laptop on hand.
One copy is not a backup.
Filed under: Preparation, Presentations | Tagged: Crash, Keynote, Laptop, Preparation, presentation
i think i was giggling. sorry. i’ve had it happen so many times and you handled it extremely well. it actually took me a while to figure out that it wasn’t on purpose.
Apparently I’m not the only one having the problem. A new Keynote update is not playing nice with Leopard. That’s one of the problems with trying to be first. Sometimes the trees fall on the pioneers.
I just thought it was funny how you were singing the praises of macintosh for “just working” and never freezing up, and low and behold, you had trouble on your mac pro all class period.
I like apple, and actually plan on getting one in the next couple of years, but I think you might be a little too dogmatic about it. I have had a pc laptop for the past 7 years, and can count the number of times on one hand that it has frozen up and given me a “blue screen of death”. Also, I have read all kinds of stuff about viruses on the mac. Though they are certainly not as prevalent and prone to viruses, they can get them nonetheless. In my mind, both sides have strengths and weaknesses, but the mac has significantly improved in the past couple of years. The main thing that has convinced me to get one for my next computer is it being able to run windows too, which a pc cannot do with the Mac OS. I just don’t feel like spending hundreds of more dollars on MS office or another Bible software program specifically for the mac.
Thanks for your presentation, you handled it quite nicely.