My phone died right before I had to give a talk in front of 200 people

I was at a big conference in Austin last month, and my slides were only on my phone. It just went black with 5 minutes to go. I felt my stomach drop. I ran to the event desk, borrowed a laptop, and logged into my cloud drive with shaky hands. I got the file open just as they called my name. It was a close call. Has anyone else had a tech fail right when you needed it most?

3 comments

3 Comments

skyler_carter25d agoMost Upvoted

That Wired article said 34% of conference speakers have had a tech crash. I keep a flash drive on my keychain now.

jordancoleman2d ago

Man, that's the worst feeling. @umabailey has the right idea with physical backups. People forget that power banks can die too, so maybe keep a cheap burner phone as a backup device.

umabailey25d ago

Man, I used to think having everything on one device was fine. Then my tablet, with all my client estimates, just bricked itself during a big storm cleanup bid meeting. Had to pull numbers out of my head while my hands were still dirty. Now I keep physical copies in the truck, no matter what.