It’s probably happened to you at some point in your life; a hard drive crash at the worst possible time, a printer breakdown the morning of your project submission, or an embarrassing failure in the middle of a presentation. Technology is making its way into boardrooms and classrooms alike, in the form of laptops, LCD projectors and computer-enabled communications devices. But people don’t always know how to use them optimally, or how to deal with them breaking down unexpectedly.
More and more schools and colleges are investing in LCD projectors so that teaching can be more interactive and students can make multimedia presentations. In fact rather than having just one “Audio Visual Room” for special occasions, they’re being carried from room to room and used wherever required. Pretty soon we’re going to see a projector installed permanently in each and every classroom. But very few of these setups have a support staff capable of setting up and troubleshooting the devices when needed. Few people know that they have to be left plugged in so the fans can run after the lamp is switched off.
In my own experience, college and office computers have been so badly infected by viruses that a PowerPoint file couldn’t even be copied to them, have been randomly reformatted so that required software just isn’t there anymore, or have even been stolen on the day of a project submission! Staff members have expressed complete astonishment when shown the amount of dirt that can build up in a projector’s air filter. Very often, it falls onto students and regular users to quietly take care of all the little required maintenance tasks.
I’ve also seen more than one reputed institute where clumsily assembled Y-splitter cables are used to connect a projector to a desktop PC in addition to its monitor. Almost all projectors today come with IN and OUT VGA ports, so that a monitor can be daisy-chained. And even the cheapest, oldest graphics cards in the market support dual display outputs. So it shouldn’t be surprising when the cables fail or fall apart or the computer can’t detect the resolution each device needs to run at, especially when one is widescreen and the other isn’t.
One time in college, I was trying to show off a website that my project group had created. Rather than simply clicking through HTML files, we had the entire site uploaded and wanted to surprise the faculty by demonstrating it running live. This meant that we needed a reliable Internet connection in the college hall, and we discovered only too late that the Wi-Fi wasn’t strong enough in that part of the building. We actually didn’t even have the pages saved on the presentation PC since the site worked so well in our computer lab.
Luckily, a wired connection was available and some lightning-quick IP address settings saved the day.
More recently, I was asked to make a presentation on editing and proofreading to a group of colleagues. I thought it would be great to use a tablet PC and pen to make a live demonstration of how errors can be marked on a printed page. Unfortunately, the tablet just didn’t recognize that it had been plugged into a projector. No amount of rebooting and checking the settings worked, and the page layout software I needed wasn’t installed on any other computer. My audience very graciously crowded around one corner of the conference table to see my presentation on the device’s 12-inch screen.
On both these occasions, disasters were very nearly averted. They taught me the importance of running through a physical check of the equipment and software before beginning a presentation. It isn’t the technology that fails, it is we fail to understand what it can and can’t do.
So there’s no excuse for not checking the projector and sound beforehand, for not making sure all the cables and connectors required will be there, for not charging the batteries in all our devices, not carrying copies of all necessary software (including drivers and codecs), and worst of all, not having backups or hard copies of the presentation itself. Nothing kills a slick presentation more than fumbling with your laptop while your audience sits impatiently staring at a blank screen. Ideally, you should be prepared well enough to make the presentation completely without technological aids. They are, after all, just aids. If they fail, it’s up to you to carry on and impress your audience.
| 
