PPTx - Microphone use

Greetings my PPTx friends!

I wanted to tell a quick story of the day...

Today I went to a corporate meeting where we had attendees in Brazil and the UK along with perhaps 60 people in physical attendance.  They had cameras and microphones so that all attendees of the meeting could see and listen.

They had two lavalier mics along with three hand held units.  Only one of the presenters use microphones with any regularity, the other six presenters are just average Joes' like you and me who work 8-5 at their cubes until one day earlier this week they were summoned to make a presentation in this daunting situation.

During the presentations, the people with the handheld mics really had a tough time holding them up to their mouths (I suffer from this problem tremendously...) which made it impossible for those outside to hear them.  One guy had the softest introverted deep voice -- very hard to hear even sitting in the room.  Another used these extended hand gestures taking the microphone to arms length away from his mouth.

Also during the presentation one of the lavalier mics suddenly started screaming across the PA system and the presenter needed to turn it off and instantly adapt to the handheld version.

So last meeting we did not really push the concept of mics until mid way through.  I suggest that this is a particularly important part of our PPTx experience.  None of the people had any idea they were going to be called to make these presentations.  We strive to be professionals.  Let's embrace this training...

Thanks!

Dirk Kittredge, DTM