36 Signs You Pulled this Presentation Together at the Last Minute
1. You start with a 15-minute meditation, then stop for a 10-minute stretch break, and end with 20 minutes of silent introspection
2. Your co-presenter’s name is Lorem Ipsum
3. There’s a typo on the first slide. And all the other slides.
4. The handouts are still warm from the copy machine
5. You start by saying you want to keep this “very high level” which means you didn’t actually prepare anything
6. You pass around your phone for people to look at screenshots you forgot to add to the presentation
7. Every slide is just one word in a giant font
8. Every other slide is 5,000 words in a tiny font
9. Every other, other slide is an animated gif that has nothing to do with the topic
10.You ask if anyone has any questions before you’ve even started presenting anything, then when someone asks a question, you ask if anyone else knows the answer
11. You’ve put random memes of kittens, puppies, or babies to distract your audience from the fact that none of this makes any sense
12. You forgot to delete the contact information or bio of the coworker you “borrowed” the slides from
13. You are presenting your plan for Q3, but it says Q3 2014
14. None of your bullet styles match from one slide to the next
15. You have a bullet point list that includes:
- ***
- TBD
- Ask Mark for the latest numbers
- **Add goal**
16. You tell everyone you prepared a lengthy PowerPoint but instead of showing it, you’d rather “hash it out” in an interactive discussion
17. You present for 5 minutes then turn it over to the group for “brainstorming”
18. You draw each slide in real time on the white board, spending lots of time picking the right color markers
19. You ask the audience what *they* think you should talk about
20. You accidentally project your desktop and it’s littered with screenshots you were taking up until right before you got up to present
21. You keep taking extended sips of water
22. You play a video that takes up 95% of your time
23. You stop presenting to re-arrange your slides mid-sesh
24. None of your graphs have an X or Y axis
25. The slide numbers are sometimes there, sometimes not, and definitely aren’t in order
26. Several slide layouts were obviously destroyed by the template when you pulled them in from another deck
27. You decide that, instead of what you were going to present, going around the room and sharing what everybody did over the weekend would be a better use of time
28. You keep asking the one person who knows anything to “back you up here” which amounts to doing your presentation for you
29. You tell a lengthy story about your childhood and, at the last minute, try to relate it back to what you were supposed to be talking about
30. You need to be frequently reminded about what you were supposed to be talking about
32. Your presentation is a Google Doc of random ideas you wrote down in your previous meeting
33. You navigate to different social media sites for a “live demo” but end up just scrolling through posts
34. You say you really can’t start without a certain person who’s not there, then you decide to cancel altogether
35. You ask a co-worker to control the slides for you, and when they ask why your slides are blank, you say they must have “messed something up”
36. Right before you start, you say you have to run to the bathroom, and you never come back
Mucho thanks for the hilarious contributions from Laura, Molly, Christina, Stacy, Tia, Peipei, Ragan, Wayne, Michaela, Antonella and Jeff
