I was very excited to be chosen to speak at the annual Women Transforming Technology conference in Palo Alto! I love travel and was looking forward both to the presentation and to my hiking trips in the California hills. But like many conferences, this one became virtual by the end of March. “No problem,” I thought. “I can make this an online presentation. What could go wrong?” Plenty, as it turns out.
Murphy’s Law
You might already know Murphy’s Law: If something can go wrong, it will. We used to focus on the technical glitches that can occur during an in-person presentation. (You remember those, don’t you?) How many times have you not been able to load your presentation file onto a host system? Forgotten to bring the correct cables to hook up your laptop? Couldn’t attach a lavalier to your outfit? Stuff happens, and we need to be able to roll with the punches.
It turns out that there are lots of ways a remote presentation can get messed up. I experienced a doozy yesterday!
Planning for mistakes
They say that the best defense is a good offense. And I knew I had to defend against the unpredictable Internet service we’ve been having lately. Since late February, the Internet for my husband Mike’s and my home/home offices dies for no good reason. Twice we’ve had techs come to fix the problem. Even though they installed new equipment, it keeps happening and nobody can explain why. The only thing we know for sure is that the problem’s outside of our control, we’re not causing it, and it’s nerve-wracking to think it’ll happen when we’re presenting or hosting a meeting.
Fortunately, we planned ahead. Mike has set up a process whereby whenever the Internet goes down, he reboots some equipment and has it working again within two minutes. He agreed to monitor my meeting and to reboot if necessary. I told the technician and the moderator about the problem before we got started. And I gave the moderator some topics she could talk about if we lost the connection.
Systems failure
Over two hundred people were at my webinar! Just as I was launching into the main part of the presentation, it happened. Everything on my screen froze and I got the dreaded Spinning Wheel of Death. The Internet had gone down.
I was on pins and needles for the next two minutes. Could Mike get the system up again? Would I be able to rejoin the webinar? What must they be thinking about me?
The plan works!
Because I had warned the meeting hosts this could happen and had made contingency plans, my sudden departure didn’t derail the whole webinar. The moderator was able to keep the conversation going while she waited for me to return to the meeting. I picked up where I’d left off and everything went fine after that.
When it happens to you…
With so many people meeting online these days, it’s only a matter of time until something similar happens to you (if it hasn’t already). If you prepare ahead of time and communicate your plan to meeting hosts, techs, and moderators, you’ll be able to bounce back quickly if you lose your connection to the meeting. And you can take comfort in the fact that people everywhere are new to this whole online meeting thing.
Falling off of a call isn’t the end of the world. But without a backup plan, it might seem like it.