You say projector, I say projector

Recently, I had some vendors in for important presentations at work. Our office didn't have enough room given the number of participants and the duration (I had six four-hour presentations over several days), so I decided to book a conference room in one of the local hotels. We chose the Ramada Convention Center in Medford and when we made the reservation, we had a pretty simple request--just a speakerphone, a projector, and an internet connection.

We showed up an hour ahead of time  and found that the speakerphone was from about 20 years ago (it was basically an '80s home phone that happened to have a speaker) and there was no projector. I called the manager and she said she hadn't been told we needed one.

By this point it's about 15 minutes until the meeting needed to start and I'm panicking. The vendor is there, participants are starting to show up and call in (of course, we can hardly hear them).

The manager then says she does have a projector...an OVERHEAD projector. All talking in the room ceased. Long pause.

"...What's an overhead projector...?" I ask.

She gives me a strange look. "It has this arm and a lamp and you put transparencies on it."

"Like from when I was five?" I say incredulously. "Don't you have a projector that, you know, plugs into a laptop?"

"No, we don't have any like that."

"Well, I don't think we can put a 20G powerpoint presentation on transparencies!"

We ended up calling the office in a panic and getting a video projector from work. We also brought our own speakerphone the next day given the entire first presentation probably sounded like we were talking into a tin can.

Lesson learned. When you live kinda in the middle of nowhere, never assume anything.

On a positive note, the people at the Ramada were really lovely and helpful the entire time. I would use them again...I would just bring my own equipment!

If you are actually looking for a projector (the real kind), check out Projector Central or any electronics store.

Or, find out more about projectors because they are just that fascinating.

Comments

[Deb]

At least she wasn't talking about a slide projector!