Tech conference bloopers: 7 stories of snafus and slipups
By JR Raphael,
InfoWorld |
Feb 15, 2011 12:00 AM
PT
Onstage falls, wardrobe malfunctions, and romantic disasters -- cue our real-life blooper reel from tech conferences around the world
Today, we celebrate some of the gaffes, goofs, and glitches that have affected folks at tech conferences around the world. Some of the bloopers were technical in nature, while others were, shall we say, a bit more on the personal side.
All of them, however, were unforgettable -- for better or for worse.
(Note: Some of the names have been changed to protect the guilty.)
Tech conference blooper No. 1: The color of embarrassment
Samantha McGarry traveled to a trade show in the United Kingdom some years back. Like many people at the convention, McGarry had gotten her hands full of freebies from various vendors set up around the event. She jammed all of them into a blue plastic bag she'd been given early in the day. Unfortunately, the bag made more of an impression on her than she realized.
"Unbeknownst to me, the blue ink from the bag was transferring to my sweaty palm and from there to my cheeks," McGarry remembers.
Naturally, hours went by without a mirror in sight, and no one had the decency to tell McGarry -- who, coincidentally, now works at a company called Inkhouse -- about her face-based faux pas. "I spent hours walking around the event, being all serious and professional, talking to clients and prospects -- with blue all over my face," McGarry says. "Imagine my horror when I went to the ladies room!"
And you thought embarrassment only left your cheeks red.
Tech conference blooper No. 2: A seated stumble
Larry Marks, who was was hosting a panel and feeling good about it, had spoken at conferences before, and an audience of 200 was no reason for rattled nerves. Marks's problem, it turns out, was that he was slightly too comfortable.
"I was talking away, leaning back in my chair -- you know, as my mother always told me not to," Marks recalls.
While balancing on his chair's rear legs, Marks toppled over backward -- midsentence. You'd better believe every set of eyes in the room was trained right on him.
"As I was falling, I really didn't know what to do," he laughs. "It was kind of a world-class embarrassing moment."
Marks, unscathed from his fall, did the only thing he could think of: He kept right on talking, acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. "Of course, everybody started laughing," Marks says. "I finally stopped and said, 'What's so funny?'"
Tech conference blooper No. 3: When romance backfires
Tech conferences may be filled with professional development, but they're also filled with after-hours socializing. Not surprisingly, given the out-of-town hotel-centric nature of the events, that socializing can sometimes lead to romantic rendezvous -- you know, of the single-night variety.
That's what happened to Sarah, a 30-something IT professional who attended a tech event with a few of her colleagues. Sarah and her coworkers got together for drinks on the first evening of the conference, and she ended up meeting someone at the hotel bar. Sarah, to put it delicately, did not return to her own room that night.
"I'd never done anything like that, but I was in Vegas, was single, and hardly knew anyone there -- so I kind of threw caution to the wind, I guess, against my better judgment," she says.
Sarah didn't think much of her encounter; the man was from another city, somewhere far away, and they weren't likely to cross paths again. Or so she thought.
"A day later, I was scheduled to do a discussion panel about virtualization . I get to the room, and guess who else is standing at the front?" she asks. Yep, you guessed it: the romantic stranger himself. Only this time, he was wearing a wedding ring -- and a name tag.
"Not only was he married, but he was a pretty well-known exec from another company," Sarah says. "I'd only gotten his first name before and hadn't made the connection."
Save for a few irritated glares, Sarah stayed composed and survived the session. Then she made an awkwardly fast exit from the room. "The whole thing sounds like something from a soap opera," she admits. "I definitely wouldn't let something like that happen again."
Tech conference blooper No. 4: The data-dropping disaster
Robin Raskin knows a thing or two about tech conference slipups. Raskin, founder of Living in Digital Times, created the Last Gadget Standing contest at the Consumer Electronics Show. The event showcases the latest and greatest products from the convention and lets audience members vote on their favorites.
Several years ago, the session almost didn't happen. Raskin was preparing for the event when one of the contestants asked her to make a last-minute change to her PowerPoint presentation. She pulled out her notebook and set it on her lap. What she didn't realize was that her shiny pants created a slick surface -- and were not particularly secure.
This was before the advent of the USB flash drive -- and certainly before the ubiquity of cloud-based storage services -- so Raskin didn't have a simple backup on hand. The only accessible copy of her Last Gadget Standing data was on the hard drive, inside that now-bricked PC.
A friend came to the rescue. He suggested finding someone with the same Compaq computer and swapping out the hard drives , thereby putting her data into a functioning machine.
The switch went off without a hitch, and Raskin was able to load her presentation and get on with the show. The event, after all, is called Last Gadget Standing -- and she wasn't about to let a broken computer keep her down.
Tech conference blooper No. 5: Wild Web woes
David Schreiber recently helped organize a tech-centric event for his IT company. The event was designed to show off the company's new and improved content management software and encourage clients to make the upgrade. One key piece of the puzzle, therefore, was a fully functioning demo lab where visitors could try out the system for themselves.
"We spent months organizing it and making on-site visits to be sure the hotel's bandwidth would be adequate," Schreiber says. "The hotel folks assured us it'd be fine."
So much for assurances: As soon as Schreiber's colleagues started their first demo, the Internet access evaporated. Apparently, the numerous Wi-Fi-connected laptops and tablets in the audience zapped up more bandwidth than the hotel had anticipated.
"The worst thing was having my boss come up to me, red-faced and ready to explode," Schreiber recalls. "I mean, we're a software company. People may intuitively understand that these things can happen, but it still makes us look silly."
Tech conference blooper No. 6: The job hunt surprise
For many people, tech conferences are as much about networking as they are about the presentations. That was the case for John, an IT pro who was looking for a new and more lucrative job early last year.
John knew industry events were teeming with managers from competing companies, so he scheduled vacation time to coincide with an event a few hours away. He packed his bags and headed out, résumés in hand and career change in mind.
As prepared as he was for the adventure, though, there was one element John didn't anticipate. "I get to the convention hotel, check in, and start mingling -- and then I run into my current boss," he says.
The boss clearly knew what was up, though he spared John the embarrassment of a direct encounter. Still, his presence didn't exactly help John's mission of meeting prospective new employers.
Tech conference blooper No. 7: The case of the sliding slacks
Weldon Vlasak traveled with his wife to a technical conference where he was scheduled to speak. As he started getting ready in their hotel room, he realized he'd forgotten one thing -- one very important thing.
"When I put on my suit, I was horrified to find that I had not packed a belt," Vlasak confesses. "This was a new suit and a bit large around the waist. My pants would slowly drop down unless I held them up."
Vlasak's wife had a solution: She pinned the pants up, ensuring they'd stay in their proper place for the presentation -- in theory.
"At the presentation, I was standing at the podium and delivering my paper when the pin gave way," Vlasak says.
Vlasak managed to catch his drawers and keep them from dropping, but his troubles didn't end there. He had to lean up against a lectern to hold the pants in place. Every time he tried to use his laser pointer, which required him to step away, he had to pull off an odd one-handed waist-holding maneuver in order to avoid flashing the crowd.
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