How Steve Jobs handles a Presentation Glitch

Steve Jobs is well known for his presentation skills and his slides are best known for their clarity and simplicity – the hallmark of a great presentation.

When the maestro made his presentation introducing his new iPhone 4, he ran into a major glitch. His iPhone was not able to connect!

Watch how he handled this glitch and potential disaster:

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoqh27E6OuU]

He did it with humor and never skipped a beat. This reinforces my point that your presentations do not have to be perfect in every way and how rehearsing is not a guarantee of success. I am sure Jobs rehearsed his presentations many many times. But he never foresaw the problem of too many people being online at the same time when he got on stage.

But because he KNEW his topic, he was able to handle the potential crisis with humor and aplomb.

A well-coached speaker with a graduate degree in French literature might have memorized his presentation with the perfect pitch and tone. But he never would have been able to handle such an unforeseen crisis.

Here is Tom Peters on Story Telling

One of my earliest posts on this blog was on “Tell them a story“. Every presentation is story telling. It does not matter how complicated your topic is, your success in presentation hinges on your story telling ability. In fact, all the great presenters and speakers have the ability to turn complicated and technical issues into SIMPLE story telling. Any fool can rattle off complicated equations and theories from a set of notes. Only the smart ones can explain them to a non-technical audience.

I think they call that communication.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wexb8tglj1o]

A presentation by a governor?

Here is a video of the Governor of Arizona BOMBING in a debate with her political opponent. Notice the long silence/pause when she was totally lost as to where she was. Her grammar needs improving too. At one point she said: “We have did (sic) what was right for Arizona……” No…governor..you did not.