Last night I gave a talk to one of the local history societies on "The Myth of the Bluestone Quarries." I prepared very carefully as usual, with a splendid Powerpoint presentation, and turned up at the venue with it safely stored on a USB memory stick, having been assured that all the digital projector gear was available and ready to run.......
The projector was there all right, but the two compatible laptop computers that are used with it were in the office downstairs, which was locked. And nobody knew where the key was. So one of the audience, who lived nearby, kindly offered to fetch his Apple Mac from his home, to see if we could use that. Ten minutes later he was back, with none of the connections needed to link up with the projector. So we thought we might just try to show the presentation on the small computer screen instead -- then discovered that the computer did not have Keynote or Powerpoint installed! We could not even scroll through pdfs........ So off he went again, to return with an Acer laptop computer, but the connections from that one to the projector did not work either. And we could not call up the presentation onto that computer screen either!
In the end, we just had to abandon the visuals altogether, and there was nothing for it other than to stand in front of the audience and natter, as coherently as I could manage, for 45 mins or so. The audience seemed happy enough afterwards -- but I did have a few thoughts about the good old days of Carousel projectors and old-fashioned slides.
There's no point in weeping -- so you might as well laugh.......
Really frustrating, know the feeling. It still seems to happen all the time.
ReplyDeleteI do believe if I was doing talks regularly I would invest in my own portable projector - they only cost 50 quid or so these days ...