5 ways to overcome a keynote crisis

After eight years as a speaker, I faced a crisis that turned into one of my most successful presentations.

I work hard to make my presentations entertaining, educational and inspirational performances. A big part of the entertainment comes from my carefully crafted visuals. I use photos to punctuate, animations to add sizzle and graphics to teach and explain.

Slides also serve as course markers for my talk. It’s hard to stand in front of a crowd and tell a story for an hour without a few prompts.

All my plans came to a crashing halt when the audio visual people could not get the visuals to project from my computer — or any computer — at a recent talk before several hundred marketers in Boston.

It was time for my talk to start. The room was packed, hushed and ready. The spotlight was on me. Three AV people were looking at each other in panic. I gently told them that it was time for them to get off the stage and I would handle it.

I pushed down my fear and disappointment and announced I would be doing a new speech that day  that I called, “Mark Schaefer: Unplugged.”

The reaction to my talk was quite unexpected. Here are some of the tweets I received:

“Amazing. Best talk of the event. Maybe best talk I have ever seen.”