I visited the Accelerator Centre this week to do a presentation/workshop for an MBET class at the University of Waterloo. The first part of the class turned out to be a bit of a challenge. Well, it was more than a bit of a challenge. It was a vivid manifestation of Murphy’s Law in action.
My presentation included supporting visuals prepared in Keynote, Apple’s wonderful presentation software for Macintosh. While I had brought my laptop, and everything else needed for the class, I had neglected to bring the correct video cable to connect my laptop to the projector in the classroom. No connector meant no supporting visuals.
Not a problem. There were other laptops in the room and there was a viable plan ‘B’ — all I had to do was export my Keynote presentation to a Powerpoint version, and transfer it to a Windows laptop. I had, in the past, done this translation many times. On this occasion, though, it didn’t work.
OK, then, on to plan ‘C’ — upload my presentation to slideshare.net. The conversion failed there, too.
Plan ‘D’ was the one that finally worked. A great colleague at Karos Health graciously hand-delivered the right cable after I called the office with my tale of woe. Cable in hand, I connected my laptop to the projector and jumped into my delayed presentation.
Of course, theres an inevitable punchline to this story. The presentation/workshop that I was delivering was about delivering presentations.