Tech Fail? Don’t Panic
Tip – Don’t panic, don’t beat yourself up, breathe, and see my top 5 tips below….
Do tech failures make you sweat?
The constant “unmute yourself”, WIFI dropouts, dialing-in cock-ups, bad audio, no audio, no video, and those unwanted freeze-frames!
Yup, me too. I used to tear my hair out when we had “gremlins in the system” at the BBC during the live radio breakfast show. We’d often go off air for NO reason.
As the senior producer, I’d have to call the EMERGENCY tech fail number …..
“HELP!” and they’d calmly respond…
“Are you broadcast critical?”
That means either you ARE LIVE, or you are ABOUT TO GO LIVE within 60-minutes!
“YES! WE ARE ON AIR…ARRHH”
The tech would OFTEN fail, so I learnt to roll with it, not panic and stick to the drill!
Now, I share my broadcast tech-fail procedures with clients and colleagues who use TEAMS, ZOOM and find themselves in a sweat on remote calls on a regular basis.
For example, I used some of my sweat-free tech-safety procedures the other week…
There I am on ZOOM. My amazing co-host for this fantastic interactive masterclass is Kim Arnold. Everything’s running smoothly, we’ve got good audio and lighting, the audience is laughing and sharing their comments in the chat. Our session is called
“How to Ace it in this Virtual World” (Haha, we are acing it, we think)
So, there we are, in mid-flow and all of a sudden Kim’s Virgin Media gets cut off by builders!
Luckily, Kim already has clever contingencies in place and can easily move rooms (the background noise is awful), she decides to use her mobile phone as a hotspot instead of the WIFI and it takes her less than 10 minutes to get back up and running.
Can you imagine that 10 minutes? It’s like a living hell trying to re-wire and re-boot as well as arrive on-screen looking like a relaxed and calm pro presenter! Kim totally pulls it off.
She tells me afterward…
“I was sweating, thank god I was tag-teaming with the queen of live!”
First of all, thank you for calling me the “queen of live” Kim! The fact is, we had some seriously great contingency plans in place. You can too.
Here are my TOP 5 Tech-Fail-Safe tips….(in today’s WFH world)
1 – Have a co-pilot.
Kim and I had each other – a co-pilot is a brilliant safety net. If one goes down, the other takes over. Phew, sweat no more.
That’s a really useful habit to get into. Just have someone to take over if you disappear, freeze, get drowned out by barking dogs or mysterious ‘gremlin in the system’ take over.
2 – Turn if off – turn it on!
My head of tech at the BBC, Steve Webb, used to come running into the Radio studio when the tech went down.
He looked like the professor from Back to the Future! And guest what Steve used to say?
You’ve guessed it
“Turn it off, and turn it back on again”
And it worked. Most of the time.
The tip here is – if you go down… dial out, turn it off, turn it on, then dial in.
3 – Contingency!
In TV you always have a FRC – full redundancy contingency. In other words, what happens if you go off-air? Usually, there’s a spare satellite link or alternative UP-LINK!
What’s yours?
My tip here is to have a few plans up your sleeve
EG
Plan A. Dial-out then dial back in and if it doesn’t work go to
Plan B. Send an email saying you’ll dial back in shortly – give yourself 5 minutes!
Plan C. Reschedule.
Plan D. Send an email saying you’ll send them the recording instead! (If you have a special guest record them while you can!)
What do you do when your tech fails?
Do you sweat and swear, or do you keep calm and carry on?
4. Don’t Beat Yourself Up!
It’s not your fault. It’s beyond your control. It’s not life or death, it’s a meeting, its technology, it WILL fail at some point. It’s ok. It’s not perfect. Yes it’s annoying but please , if you can. Don’t let it spoil your day or your mood!
5 – Dial-in early!
Seems obvious, however, many clients take it for granted that they can show up on the hour by clicking on the link, only to find they’ve not got the right software update.
Those few precious minutes could save you a whole lot of stress. Simples!
Hey, I’ve hosted over 160 remote sessions since 2020 and I’ve seen every kind of issue & tech fail there is.
If you’d like me to host my – How to Ace It in this Hybrid World Masterclass, get in touch. It’s a stress-free-tech-fail-safe session for pitch teams, management teams & senior leaders.
Or you might like to check out my menu of masterclasses here.