Presentation-Secrets-Of-Steve-Jobs
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210 REFINE AND REHEARSE<br />
issue. He smiles, has fun, explains to the audience what they<br />
should have seen, and moves on.<br />
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff<br />
During a demonstration of Apple TV at Macworld 2008, <strong>Jobs</strong><br />
brought up a live connection to Flickr, a photo-sharing site. <strong>Jobs</strong><br />
selected several categories to show the audience how photographs<br />
could be served from the site and displayed on a wide-screen<br />
television in a living room. Unfortunately, the screen went black.<br />
After about twenty seconds of trying to retrieve the images, <strong>Jobs</strong><br />
simply turned to the audience, grinned, and said, “Well, I’m<br />
afraid Flickr isn’t serving up photos on that one.” 5<br />
<strong>Jobs</strong> doesn’t let anything ruffle him onstage. Instead, he<br />
acknowledges the problem, continues the presentation, summarizes<br />
the material, and enjoys himself. He concluded the Apple<br />
TV demonstration by saying, “All of this from your wide-screen:<br />
movies, TV shows, music, podcasts, photos from dot-Mac and—<br />
when they’re serving up photos—Flickr! So, that’s what I wanted<br />
to show you today. Isn’t that incredible?” 6 <strong>Jobs</strong> never loses his<br />
enthusiasm. The demo might not have gone perfectly, but that<br />
doesn’t diminish the joy he has for the product.<br />
No matter how much you prepare, something might, and<br />
probably will, go differently from how you had planned. Notice<br />
that I did not say something will go “wrong.” It goes wrong<br />
only when you call attention to the issue or you let it ruin the<br />
rest of your presentation. People are there to hear you, to learn<br />
something new about a product, service, or initiative that could<br />
improve their lives.<br />
When a demo fails to come off as smoothly as <strong>Jobs</strong> had<br />
rehearsed, he never loses his cool. He says something like, “Oops,<br />
that’s not what I wanted” or “I need some help here, guys; this<br />
thing isn’t working.” He will take a few moments to get it working,<br />
and he will do so very calmly.<br />
In one presentation, <strong>Jobs</strong> could not get a digital camera to<br />
work, so he had some fun with it, tossed it to an Apple employee<br />
in the front row, and said, “I need an expert to fix it. It’s too