Projector or Mic Dies During Presentation? What the Host Does Next

TL;DR

• When the projector or mic dies during a presentation, the host stops talking to the kit, says one plain sentence to the room and signals the AV desk. Nothing is fixed in front of the audience.
• The first 30 seconds are for calm and one sentence. The next three minutes are for a 60-second task and a decision.
• Set the cut-off before you need it. At three minutes with no fix, run the no-tech version and move on.
• Plan B is built at the rehearsal: a spare microphone, a second copy of the slides, an agreed signal and a few fillers that need no kit.

A tech failure on stage is any moment the projector, microphone, clicker, video or lights stop working while the room is watching. I am Kevin Durham, a broadcast-trained conference host, MC and panel moderator, and this page covers only the live response. When the projector or mic dies during a presentation, the audience judges your calm long before it judges the kit.

What does a host do in the first 30 seconds when the projector or mic dies?

A host stops, turns to the room, says one plain sentence about what has happened, signals the AV desk and stays with the audience. The kit is somebody else’s job. The room is yours.

The pull is to walk to the laptop or tap the microphone. Resist it. Every second you spend visibly wrestling the fault, the audience spends watching you lose.

1. Stop talking to the screen. Face the room and keep your hands still.
2. Say your one sentence (wording below).
3. Give the signal you agreed with the AV desk. Never shout across the hall.
4. Wait. Ten seconds of calm silence feels long on stage and reads as control from row twelve.

What do you say to the room when the kit fails?

Say what is wrong, what is being done and what happens next, in about fifteen words. Then stop apologising. One apology is manners; four is a confession.

Also leave out “bear with us”, any time you cannot keep (“two minutes”) and blame aimed at the crew on a live microphone. A power or lighting fault that could affect safety belongs to the venue’s emergency procedure, not to the host.

How do you buy time without waffling?

Give the audience a job for about 60 seconds rather than a monologue. A task keeps the whole room with you, while filler talk hands attention to their phones. A stall at 2pm hits a room that is already flagging after lunch, so the job matters most then.

Good 60-second jobs need no kit: “Turn to the person beside you and agree the one question you want this speaker to answer”, or “Write down the one thing you want from the afternoon.” Sudha Mani, a Toastmasters member quoted in the Irish Times in October 2018, uses the same move: she throws a question at the audience while she regroups.

If the laptop is running but the slide is wrong or frozen, Microsoft’s PowerPoint notes (a Learn blog post, read November 2026) say B blacks out the screen, and pressing it again returns the slide. It pulls eyes back to you. If the screen is simply blank, Windows logo key plus P, per Microsoft’s display mode page, offers PC screen only, Duplicate, Extend and Second screen only. That is the AV desk’s job, not the host’s.

The discipline is the clock. Decide privately to wait three minutes, whatever anyone says about “nearly there”. Spotting restlessness early is its own skill: see reading the room.

When do you cut to a no-tech version?

Cut to no-tech when your cut-off passes, or when the AV desk says the fix will outlast the next item. The Toastmasters magazine (December 2020) puts the principle plainly: slides are support materials, and the talk should stand on its own.

A workable order of fallbacks:

1. The speaker talks without slides, from notes or printed screenshots, which Toastmasters (February 2017) advises printing in case technology fails.
2. Swap the running order so a session that needs no kit goes first.
3. Run the conversation item early: a panel or fireside chat on a spare handheld microphone.
4. Bring the break forward, announced as a start time and not as an apology.

Say it plainly: “We are going to start Maya’s session without slides. She will talk us through it, and the slides join us when they are ready.” Spare minutes come from the same slack discussed in speaker overrunning: never from the close.

Who do you signal when the kit goes?

You signal one named person at the AV desk, with a gesture agreed before doors. A shout across the hall tells four hundred people there is a crisis and fixes nothing.

Agree three things with the AV lead: the gesture, the reply and a number. A thumbs up means “seen”; a flat hand means “longer than three minutes”. Put their mobile on the run of show for the runner. And check the sight line: a desk behind a pillar defeats the signal, which is one reason the stage layout matters.

The plan B you build at the rehearsal

Plan B is a short list of things that exist before the failure: they are not improvised on the day. Mani’s advice is simply to have one ready. At the rehearsal, put these in place:

• A spare microphone, already switched on and tested, held at the sound desk.
• Every speaker’s slides on the show laptop and a second copy on a USB stick.
• Printed slides or a script for each speaker, kept in the wings.
• The signal, the reply and the three-minute cut-off, agreed aloud with the AV lead.
• Five fillers that need no kit: two questions for the room, a quick round of hands, a chat with the next panellist, a short audience task.
• One session that can move up with no slides at all.

Toastmasters (February 2017) tells solo speakers to bring their own projector and two lavalier microphones. A conference has a crew for that, so the spare lives at the sound desk.

A stalled day from the organiser’s side

Everything above is general practice drawn from the sources linked, not from one night. The one real account I can offer is an organiser’s, from my reviews page:

“Some of the speakers were late, there was a video problem, there were all sorts of complications and we got delayed by an hour and a half. In all those small pauses Kevin had to go on stage and entertain the audience and keep it going, so as not to lose attention.” (Full-day educational event, Organiser)

A hackathon client said: “You kept people engaged, and those fillers especially, when there is a gap, you did an absolutely fantastic job keeping people engaged.” (Hackafone, Virtusa)

Your fault will differ, but the pattern carries over. Pauses arrive in small pieces, and someone must be ready to stand in each one.

When is it worth hiring a conference host for this?

It is worth hiring a professional host when the day has live video, remote speakers or several rooms. Every added dependency is another thing that can stall, and someone must hold the audience while the AV desk works.

A host who has run more than 800 events takes that job off an organiser who is already fixing the building, the supplier and a late sponsor. Doing it yourself is the right call for a half-day internal session, one laptop and a chair the room already trusts. The wider job is in how to host a conference.

What to have ready when you get in touch

Have the date, the venue and room size, the agenda, which sessions depend on video, remote speakers or a live demo, and what went wrong last time. Each event is quoted at a fixed price with no hidden extras. As a conference host, I can tell you quickly which sessions I would put a plan B behind. Check availability, or send the agenda to hello@conferencehost.uk or call 07596 851647.