This morning, after overcoming my normal computer start-up issues – the face recognition said I didn’t look like me and that because I had already put in too many wrong pins, I had to complete a challenge quest. While I can agree that I don’t tend to look or feel like myself much before midday nowadays, I thought facial recognition software had overcome the diurnal issues faced by humans.

Also the computer remained oblivious to and contemptuous of my shouted protests that I had NOT attempted to enter any passwords yet – but that’s another story to do with the voice recognition also going AWOL.

I now had the one chance to gain entry by entering a challenge code to prove I was not an AI-bot. Well, it was touch and go – is that a 1 or a capital I?  Is the next character a zero or a capital O? No wonder binary codes got supplanted by higher level computer languages. Having crossed this flimsy bridge over the river of doom, I did access my computer and join the web meeting.

All going well – Sara gave a good introduction, and I managed to get my Power Point presentation to share screen. Then halfway through my presentation my Power Point slides got stuck. They were moving on as normal on my screen. The same screen that I was sharing with the webinar participants and viewing and speaking to! How does that happen? How is it even possible?  Did I press the down arrow instead of the spacebar? Both actions had worked to produce the same effect of progressing the slide many times before.  I was to go through the same thought processes a bit later when Sara suddenly disappeared. Did I press the UP arrow, instead of the down arrow?

Apparently, comments about PP slides not changing, started to appear in the chat box, but I don’t have this on when I’m presenting, as it blocks off the side of the screen and I can’t read parts of the slide I am talking to. Sara tried to tell me this, but by now she was now wearing her flip-in microphone, behind her head, so when she repeated tries to tell me”That the slides aren’t moving!”, I can’t hear her and either have a choice of putting my ear closer the  computer speaker to hear the minimal squark that was being emitted, and give everyone a detailed look at the inner working of my left ear, or stay still and just look blank (usually quite easy and the default go to), wondering if I should say something profound like  “What?” or just remain silent and hope it all works out using the headless chicken approach.

Eventually, the microphone was spotted and returned to its rightful place. So I ended up having to repeat a couple of slides at the end of the presentation, taking up valuable points of information / questions time.

At  this juncture I should digress to point out that the title “staying live” should not be confused with “staying A live” the well-known Bee Gees song with the two beats a second rhythm, often used as an emergency defibrillator.  It’s a technique that I have had to self-administer to restart the heart a couple of times during previous webinar disasters.

Look, this isn’t just a webinar – it’s a reality show featuring a disparate group of analysts, practicing and enacting a range of communication gaffes and disasters in real time on-line. Probably at the very least, a good spectator sport.

There is of course a downside, it’s recorded and posted on You-tube so we can relive the experiences,  again and again, and CRINGE.  However, the final cut on You-Tube will have some mild – editing, so we are partially sanitised for posterity. The 1-minute headless chicken freeze can be reduced to a few seconds of knowing contemplation and the answers to questions can be reduced to a shorter more focused answer, such as  “er or ee” rather than “Eeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhh what was the question again?”

Lee has control of the editing and I have forgotten the times I have said “I owe you a drink Lee”…………

Of course, some of the regular watchers may be aware of some of the all- time great disasters that have been enacted live. My own favourites include:

1)    The area power outage notice received a couple of days before, forcing me to flee elsewhere, so I could do the webinar.

2)    My local electrician who was coming to do a much-needed job with strict instructions not to come until after three and under no circumstances was he to turn the power off. I even locked all the outside doors as a precaution. After banging on the door at precisely the time I was just starting my presentation, and when no one opened, he remembered where the spare key was and  let himself in and switched off the power immediately, so he could start work.

My computer was quite happy on its battery power, but I suspected something had happened, but mid-way through a presentation you have a Hobson’s choice:

1. To suddenly disappear mid-sentence to investigate whether the Wifi, situated some three room away is still working,
2. Politely enquire “What the F…. is going on?” with unpredictable consequences.
3. Or carry-on just in case – always the professional thing to do, even as the ego starts oozing from the non-recoverable wounds of suspicion and doubt before progressing to the full horror – that you are alone! Slowly sinks-in.

Even after enacting these choices, in order of c, to a, To further compound the situation, the sudden disruption of power meant that when I managed to get the power back on and re-connect,  I appeared to have loaded up a browser and app version of Teams and could not get the presentation to share screen again.

So back to today, Electricians not due, no power outages and door securely locked ……Surely nothing could happen today! Just Sara’s unexplained disappearance but that had yet to happen…

Exactly 45 minutes into the webinar my phone rang. This is the first time I had a live phone with me, as previously people had tried to contact me during the power turn-off to let me know I had disappeared – a live phone is now deemed an essential risk worth taking.

It’s just that I happened to be on grandparent emergency call-out, for when my daughter goes into labour – to quickly travel to her house and to get the other little grandchildren corralled and safe, and if hubby didn’t make it back pronto, to get her to the maternity unit. We had had a false alarm the day before, so I was in a state of trepidation, but had given strict instruction the night before, that she wasn’t allowed to go into labour until after 12 noon.

The phone rang at 11:45 with 15 minutes of the webinar still to go. Seeing her name on the phone I immediately fled the room to take the call. There are a number of sure-fire stressors in my life and the disasters that accompanied all three of my children’s births are some of the uppermost – Not in Labour! Phone was tossed away and I returned to the screen. By this time I was discombobulated and reliving these past traumas and reduced to mindless repetitions of “You Know” when trying to answer questions.

Then just close to the end of the webinar, when Sara was supposed to do the wrap-up, she disappeared.

Staying alive, staying alive, staying Aliveeeeeeeeeeeeee!

The recording of the first 6 webinars can be found at……but if your want the real- deal the live performance is so much more interesting………Look out for further details in e-mails from BOHS marketing and on the forthcoming events on the BOHS website.

p.s. James Staff was the last one standing and coolly stepped in to end the webinar.

pps.  After a very eventful labour, the baby and mother are doing fine.