I had attempted to record a dual podcast episode and video slideshow of the presentation I did at Blog World Expo to include in this post, but 5 minutes into the recording my voice went hoarse.
I guess I still need a couple of days to recover.
I am, however, happy to write a recap of my speaking experience at BWE in LA last week.
Now – you might be wondering why I would need to re-record my presentation.
The reason is because something unexpected happened during my presentation at BWE, something that on the inside, for a brief moment, made me just want to flee.
Let me tell you the story leading up to it…
Family Time
I arrived in Los Angeles Tuesday afternoon with my wife and son, and Gizmo (our dog) too. We wanted to enjoy some scenery around the city together before the weekend when they would go back home and I would stay to enjoy the rest of the event.
During the next few days we went to LA Live, The Grove, Griffith Park and Santa Monica. We even saw a taping of Extra! at the Grove and saw stars Mario Lopez and Ted Danson there.
At night when my son would fall asleep, I would go down into the lobby of our hotel and work on my presentation. I had finished my slides by Wednesday night and stayed up until 4am that night to begin memorizing my slides. When it got too loud in the lobby I’d bring my laptop into our bathroom and practice there while my family was sleeping in the other room.
I really wanted to knock this presentation out of the park. It was to be my 2nd public speaking experience, one that was 3 times as long (60 minutes vs. 20 minutes at the Financial Bloggers Conference), and come on – it was Blog World Expo! The world’s largest event of it’s kind.
If you ask anyone who saw me before my presentation on Friday, they’ll tell you that I was extremely nervous. It was a healthy nervous, like one that you get before you do something that you really care about, but yeah – I was nervous.
Crunch Time
Thursday evening my family left LA to head back home and I had planned on staying up until 4am again to run through my presentation at least 6 times, but I had to stop because my voice started to disappear.
Sleep was much needed, so that’s exactly what I did. I prepared 4 different alarms so I could make sure I woke up early enough to practice a few more times.
At 7:45am, the alarm(s) sounded.
I showered, went across the street to grab some oatmeal and a banana at Starbucks, and I came back to continue to run through the slides as much as possible.
At 12:00pm, I headed to the convention center and met up with Corbett Barr, Chris Ducker and a few others for a quick lunch. I couldn’t really eat much (my stomach was full of butterflies), so I took a few bites and just headed to the room where I was speaking.
The room was amazing. It was a large theater which sat about 300 people. Then, I was getting excited as I saw people take their seats, and at 1:44pm Mr. David Risley, the Monetization track leader for BWE, introduced me and I was on.
Oops Time
The presentation started off great! I was so in the zone and I was excited to see people respond to my opening which I had practiced at least 100 times.
As I was going, I was becoming more confident.
“I got this” I said to myself.
Then, the unthinkable happened.
Mid-sentence, I look back and do a “double take” when I see that the slide behind me that was supposed to say “Being Everywhere” instead said ”Bei Everyw”.
Apparently, the font I was using in my keynote presentation was not in the computer I was using. I thought I was able to use my own computer, but I wasn’t allowed to because BWE was recording the slides along with the audio from their own computers.
I totally messed up, and as a result any slides with text on it were messed up too:
Not good. Not good.
For a split second I thought about yelling, blaming someone else, or just leaving, but I said to myself “screw it – let’s just go on with it”, so I did.
My good friend Cliff Ravenscraft from PodcastAnswerMan.com actually captured the whole thing, from the start of my presentation, to my realization (and my hilarious “double take”) that the slides were all jacked up and how I handled it.
You can watch it below or click here to see it on Cliff’s site.
I continued with my presentation and poked fun at myself and the slides along the way, which made people laugh. Luckily I had spent so much time memorizing the slides that I didn’t need to rely on them.
Here are some awesome Tweets that were tweeted during this part of the presentation:
(thanks @gfiremark, @movielawyer, @nichole_kelley & @wickedjava!)
When the presentation ended, it was a huge relief and I was pretty upset at myself for letting that happen.
They told me that because of what happened, my presentation was more memorable and they could see that I really knew what I was talking about because I was able to memorize what was on each slide, even though you could only see just a few letters.
A couple of people actually thought I did it on purpose because it was more engaging and entertaining. My response was, “definitely not on purpose”, but I’m really glad it worked out for me.
Two Things I Learned From This Experience:
First, if you’re going to do any type of presentation with slides, make sure they work correctly in the environment you’ll be presenting in.
The issue I had was that I was using an awesome font in my keynote presentation that was downloaded and on my computer, but not on the computer I was presenting on.
Downloaded fonts can be dangerous like that, and actually if you still want to use these non-native fonts on any computer, one really good tip someone told me afterwards was to turn the presentation slides into PDFs, and present those instead.
Secondly, and most importantly, life is going to throw us curveballs sometimes. We can plan and prepare for thing all we want – things like this just happen to us from time to time, for whatever reason.
Expect the unexpected and realize that life is really 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you react to it.
Roll with the punches, don’t beat yourself up and work with what you’ve got to work with.
Happy Time!
Thankfully everything went well, and despite what happened everyone who attended seemed to get a lot out of the presentation.
Like I said, I will be recording a version for you to watch on the blog and listen to on the Podcast once my voice recovers.
Not to toot my own horn, but apparently my presentation was the most attended, non-keynote presentation in the entire conference, and I was receiving compliments from people throughout the entire weekend. It was awesome!
Here are some amazing comments from some amazing people on Twitter:
(Thanks to @LeoWid – founder of BufferApp!, @JosephPutnam, @therichbrooks, @wickedjava, @vincentng, @meganstrand and everyone else who tweeted and gave a shout out about my presentation!)
After my presentation we had the SPI community meetup at the Yardhouse Restaurant in LA Live across the street and about 20 people came by to celebrate with me.
There are way too many people to thank, but I do want to give a special shoutout to David Risley, the monetization track leader who filled me in at the beginning of the year about submitting a proposal to potentially speak at Blog World Expo this year, and of course to those who attended my presentation, and to the SPI community in whole – thank you all for your support.
BWELA 2011 was an amazing experience and I hope I get the chance to speak at Blog World Expo again.
I’ll have my recording done for you soon, plus some information about what I learned in some of the other presentations too.
Cheers, and all the best to you!
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Congrats on a job well done! I probably would have freaked out… you handled it very well!!!
Hi Pat, Public speaking can be one of the most frightening and intimidating things for a person to do, and that’s when everything works out!
I watched the video and smiled and laughed at the mishap. In that moment it feels like you connected with the audience, you suddenly became vulnerable and human, people can universally relate to that. After that happened I’m sure the audience was much more open to absorbing all you had to say. You rolled with the punches and did a great job moving forward! Good Work!
-Mike
Pat you’re a cool man. Don’t take that situation so serious. Everybody was interested listening to you. Sometimes shitty situations turn out to be in your favor.
Hey Pat, I’m just breaking into public speaking myself. Good to see how you handled this unexpected event. It reminds me that emotional intelligence is far more valuable than having everything go “smoothly.” Good job!
I just wanted to say thanks for all the wonderful and awesome comments everyone!
I think everyone in the room is glad that you didn’t bail on us, Pat. You did great and frankly, I think the technical snafu added to the charm of the presentation. It was great meeting you at Blogworld, and I really did enjoy watching your presentation.
I would have freaked out, ha. Good job, Pat!
You are an inspiration Pat, keep up the good work. I always get excited when you release a new post!
I like how this post’s title and headline play into people’s fears of public speaking to get them interested.
Public presentations can be so much fun.
You spend hours setting up your work but can never be prepared for everything.
One of my best failures was while running a seminar in Perth Australia.
I spent hours preparing my multi media and it was a beautiful thing.
The day of setup I had a bad car accident and wrote off the car but I was ok. That evening at the conference centre in was doing my usual pre tests when undiscovered the laptop had been damaged in the accident.
A late night and I recovered most of my work.
Next day. The day of the 4 hour presentation I list my voice so had to croak my way through it with lots of pauses to try to get the words out.
Pat, well done for putting out such a great presentation at Blog World Expo regardless, you certainly handled that situation very well by the looks of things. I’ve been looking to organise a local webinar to talk about internet marketing in my neck of the woods and have no experience in public speaking whatsoever, so I’d just like to thank you for being an inspiration.
Hello Pat,
My first time at, well actually second time, at your blog.
I was here the other eveing listening to the podcast of MJ Demarco The fastlane Millinaire.
With regards to your article here, way to flow on with your presentation. That seaks of a real pro at his game.
When I was a youth I played in a band and a guy came to hear us who supposedly was a promoter of some sort.
Anyway our lead singer accidently droppped his mike while singing and about freaked out.
The promoter spoke up and said, never ever let the audience see you sweat. If you mess up, keep going, keep the show going. He said most of the people will not even notice and many will think it was part of the show.
I have never forgot that.
I, years later, actually obsevred this in action by the R & B group the spinners. Their lead singer was dancing around and dropped the mike, he didn’t miss a beat. He picked it up and kept singing, it made me think back to what the promoter said.
Great story Pat. It speaks to proper preparation and knowledge of your subject. It’s also a good lesson in not taking ourselves too seriously. I much enjoy your site, by the way.
Pat, really enjoyed this story. I have had a couple presentations go this way and winging it sometimes turns out the best. You handled this superbly!
I’m so Inspired on how you handled your presentation. It’s awesome to realize that even big guys like you make mistakes and a perfect presentatation is not always the case. And yeah you are a “big guy” (Guru) in my opinion. I just love that your transparent on your blog and that your yourself in everything you do.
Thanks, Pat.
Hi Pat,
I wasn’t at the event, but I love the way you have presented the experience. I love how you recovered from a potentially disastrous situation. This really demonstrates your ability to respond in the wake of a very embarrassing calamity.
I’ve really enjoyed this post. You are a true professional! Sally
Hi Pat, that is quite a story. Good to hear that everything went well in the end. Hey is there any possibility that you can share the presentations with us, especially for people who cannot afford to attend blog world. I would love to hear all that was discussed. Or do you know a source where I can view the blog world recording.
“and for those who are walking in, slides are jacked up”
Classic!
Dude! That was awesome how you handled the presentation!! Just rolling with it was brilliant.
Anyway, all the best and keep doing what you do!
Hi Pat, great to read that it all turned out well in the end, and I believe that you handled this perfectly. I would love to get some cash out of this… but I won’t… but you really should check out the 48 laws of power, and this will show you examples throughout history of what you should have/could have done and the reasons why.
It is one of the best books I have ever read (it is a self help book, but also a really good read) check it out on Amazon or the such like.
Hope you find it interesting and it helps/entertains!
Awww, typos are the worst. It builds character I think, you will be extra mindful of your slides from now on I bet. It makes you seem more personable to the audience too, you had a mishap, you are human. I wouldn’t be reading about other people if I was perfect now would I. Thanks for sharing. Cheers.
Great recovery Pat.
You plain and simple just have to much SWAG to let those little things affect you Pat!
Congrats man!… You’re a great example to look up to!
Pat. The reason you are successful is definitely your unfaltering dedication. You amaze me with the amount of effort you put into each and every thing you do. I was really surprised to read that you memorized the presentation and rehearsed it several times. You truly deserve all the success you get and I genuinely wish you the best. If all of us put in just one tenth of the effort you put in, the world will be so much better.
Cool as a cucumber! What else could you have done? Not sure if you’ve addressed this anywhere, but other than make sure you use a “safe” font, what will you do to prepare for similar mishaps in the future? I heard where this happened to Steve Jobs once and he diverted to a personal story while the Tech Team fixed the glitch. Here’s a link to a TED talk that shares this story and some research that has been done on giving great presentations: http://dwaynes–world.blogspot.com/2011/06/do-you-have-story-to-tell.html
I must agree when you said that “the slides were hilarious and actually worked in my favor”. Such a blessing in disguise. We can always say the character of a person depending on how he/she reacts to a problem. Nice reaction and great presentation indeed! =)
Awesome job Pat! I know exactly how that feels I had a similar thing happen to me during a presentation with some HP executives.
This just demonstrates professionalism all around and the fact that you know what you are talking about.
AWESOME recovery.. omg… I think i would have ran off.. you were funny, composed, real. Great job, great presentation! and wonderful tips.
using fancy fonts can be a big problem as you experienced. i’ve had a few of those problems while designing websites.
It’s great that you were able to turn the situation around and even get people to enjoy your presentation (instead of you pitying yourself and expecting the same from the audience.)
Hi! Pat,
I’m glad you recovered from the disappointment. What really matters in life is not the events or the circumstances but our response to it.
Your response was good and you carried the audience with it.
You’re blessed.
Regards,
Chukwuka.
I wanted to thank you for this great read!! I definitely like it.I have to bookmarked your site to check out new stuff new post.
I salute you for such a brave act! I love your presentation though, thumbs up!
Great recovery. I guess at such a moment your survival-mode kicks in and then it depends on a person’s personality as well how to handle it.
Hey Pat,
If you’re going to screw up, screw up big – good comeback though. It looks like you had the audience support so at least that was going for you. Always use a nice Sans Serif type font included with all computers / macs is what i’d say but good tip on using pdf files which are font independent for the most part.
Dwight Anthony
Financially Elite Blog dot com
Awesome way to react and transition it Pat! Wish I were there. Sounds like it was a great presentation.
Then you go and do something like that….and TOTALLY redeem yourself!
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