It was Brussels! It was October 2004! I had just driven from Amsterdam where I had given a presentation about MS Excel. I was (I still am?) a wizard on Excel and it’s amazing what we can find in there. And whilst most of us use only 10% of its functionality I probably use about 50% or more.

Anyway, I arrived in Brussels and checked in to my hotel at about 5pm. I was due to speak at 7pm and my normal routine always requires me to arrive one hour early, to familiarise myself with the room, and to psyche myself up! That was certainly true back then when I had just turned professional. And just as I had planned, I was in the seminar room by 6pm.

I didn’t have a PowerPoint presentation, but I had a collection of spreadsheets and other notes on my laptop. My client had promised a projector and I duly hooked up my laptop to his projector and nothing happened. I was prepared . . . I fetched my spare laptop . . . and nothing happened. We spent around 30 minutes wasting valuable time, and the delegates began to trickle in. At 6.30pm we moved to Plan B and asked the hotel if they had a projector. Yes they did, it was a bit old and they weren’t sure where to find it!

At 6.50pm, with just 10 minutes to go, I was trying to work out how to demonstrate Excel’s whistles and bells without a projector, with 30 people in the room, and with a 15 inch screen on my laptop. Five minutes to go, and the steam driven projector owned by the hotel materialised. It took an age to warm up. My host embarked on a long winded introduction. A colleague and I feverishly coaxed that suitcase sized piece of apparatus into action . . . and it worked. I was on!

And that was the last time that I ever used Hi Tech to give a presentation!

To be honest, that experience was not the whole reason I switched. Just a week or so after that disaster had been averted, I attended a talk given by John Ketley . . . about the weather. He was a BBC weatherman until 2003 and had moved in order to set up a private company specialising in refined forecasts. Amongst his clients were the groundsmen at Arsenal and the bosses at Cheltenham Race Course. John started his one hour talk by picking up a light bulb from a table laid out with 14 visual aids. He was an expert speaker. His visual aids were all Lo Tech and they were all spot on. I had been converted.

I have never used PowerPoint, and since Oct 2004 I have never even used a computer, only Lo Tech visual aids. It makes a presentation all the more memorable. Can you remember the last set of PowerPoint slides you saw? Can you remember the most recent Lo Tech aid you saw? See what I mean?

During the last four weeks, I have used a bucket of water, a frisbee and a toaster. Next week, I have a giant cuddly bat and a catamaran to help me. If you’re free on Thursday evening 27 Aug 2009, I’m giving a short talk in London on the use of Lo Tech visual aids. It’s a session at my speaking club, it’s a short walk from Victoria station, and it’ll be a lot of fun. You’re welcome to come along as my guest. There will be other speakers, not just me, and entrance is free! Click here for more details.