True or False?

1. The speaker is responsible for giving the lecture.

2. The speaker is not responsible for the technical aspects of the venue.

1 = TRUE 2=FALSE!!

As much as we want to divorce ourselves from anything but standing in front of an audience and letting the wisdom roll off our tongues, we need to make sure the show goes on without a hitch – WE are the show.

My point is…. YOU need to make sure everything works. Like how your laptop gets connected to the projection system. You can blame the tech staff all you want, but YOU are the one who is getting rated by the audience. They don’t care whose fault it is…they just want to be entertained.

In the early days of PC to Projector communication, everyone used VGA …(Video Graphics Array) as the way to send signals to the projection system. It was developed by IBM in 1987…. the resolution was very low … today called it’s just called “VGA resolution.”

VGA is analog… so you can’t get HD (High Definition) quality images on the screen – very old technology.   It’s so old that many laptops are not even coming with those jacks.  It’s video only; to get audio, you have to plug in a speaker system to your headphone jack. Yes, it works, but is a steam engine. 

HDMI is High-Definition Multimedia Interface.  It sends both video AND audio ….  and is much better. The specs are updated frequently – to be faster and more reliable. All modern laptops have HDMI jacks on them  – newer laptops don’t even have VGA.

Learn about Laptop DVD players – does yours even have one?

The bottom-line here is that you MUST meet with the tech staff well before you go on stage to make sure what system they are using. Don’t ASSUME they have their act together. If you speak on cruise ships, a few still do not have expensive state-of-the art projection systems. You MAY run into VGA. It will work – but the ship may not have the proper cable.

If they do use HDMI (hopefully), and you use an Apple, you need a converter to change from your “DVI”(Digital Visual Interface) output to HDMI. You may even need a DVI to VGA! Really!

Rule 27: Bring your own cables and adaptors.