Monday, June 01, 2009

Work Tip: Presentations (Always have Outlook closed)

At long last i've finally decided to kick the dust off this blog of mine. It's been an age, and then some. I'm actually surprised that the blog still exists, but hey... perhaps I am loved afterall. So to herald my return to the world of blogging i've decided to let loose with a tip on conducting presentations - and that tip is: Always have Outlook closed.

So every week we have this team meeting and we have the occasional guest speaker. Now, I won't bore you with all of the details on what the presentation actually contained... but it was mildly interesting. Now the presenter had brought his own laptop, and was connected to his email wirelessly. He had prepared presentation slides and they were visible to the 25-odd attendees via a data projector pointing to a bare white wall.

Now, as many of you are aware Outlook has this feature where a little pop-up appears on the bottom right of the screen when an email is received. Just to be sure that we don't miss it. Well, this was one occasion where you clearly did not want the incoming email alert to fire up. Lo and behold, up came the alert approximately 35 minutes into the presentation.

I don't know the presenter, and I don't exactly know what the contents of the email were but the subject alone was enough to have me in stitches, along with many of the other attendees at this meeting. In big, bold, capital letters the subject was clear for everyone to see... and it was "I AM GAY!!!". ROFL! Poor guy had a hard time recovering from that email. The presentation wrapped up 5 minutes later. So a tip for those that wish to hold presentations... always have Outlook closed.

I hope that was entertaining, and chances are that i'll probably take an age to write again. See how diligent I am. Ciao!