it will. And it did.I met with the Raleigh Ruby Meetup on Tuesday night. They were a GREAT group who was really participative and seemed to really appreciate the topic (‘Bore No More’) and the format. I had a few slides to demonstrate some major points (mostly what NOT to do) and was holding a video in my hip pocket in case it was appropriate. The facility was plug ‘n play — show up and everything should work. And it did. At least their equipment did.I’ve been having some rather pesky problems with my (Windows) laptop, and apparently am headed for a restage (side note, I’m in the process of replacing it as my desktop machine with Linux, but I digress). But I had managed two crash-free days and things were going well. I tested what I intended to demo twice and everything was just fine.Powered up and apparently ready at the event, I settled in to social browsing with the crowd and heard a familiar Windows “ker-chunk” through the house sound and looked at the screen to see some never-before-seen (and never since) error message involving an NT Kernel exception or some such nonsense. WHAT?!?! Before I could get to it, the tech savvy crowd had already seen it and likely formed an opinion of my incompetence. The introductions were upon us and I had to begin.Things went smoothly as I put myself in the role of an actor and played a technical presenter (which was my shtick for the night). True to form, the error pops up at the most inopportune time. I muted and blanked the screen and it never bothered me again, but I also was moving away from the PC altogether and didn’t care. Someone from the audience said it really supported my point and thought I had actually set it up. It really did fit, but it was far from intentional.The rule of thumb is beyond Murphy’s Law, and any presenter needs to have prepared for what will happen if something or everything doesn’t work. Test vigorously and thoroughly and don’t leave anything to chance. But when the time comes, it WILL fail at some point in your career. Count on it.
Have a Plan B for any part of your presentation.
