A few months ago I gave a talk about VOIP video phone project I’d worked on to a hundred or so of my coworkers. The video screens were only three inches by two inches so I wasn’t sure if they were big enough to be seen at a distance. I had the option to magnify the video image onto a projector screen, but geeky reasons we won’t get into this would have had problems.

I arrived at the venue half an hour early. I put both phones on a table in the front - which was at the same level as the audience, as there was no stage. Then I went to the extreme back corners of the room to see how they looked. The video image was good from a distance, so I didn’t use the projector. I already was thinking about blogging about how smart I was. After all, I showed up way early and anticipated the problem.

The only problem is that I screwed up.

Since I was half an hour early, there was no one in front of me when I went to the back of the room, only eight rows of empty chairs. When I actually gave the demo, the room was packed. I could see from people craning their heads around the people in front of them that I should have elevated the phones a few feet so people wouldn’t have this problem. lifted the phone up a few feet, which helped but was far from ideal.

Had my audience been transparent beings made of pure energy, my line of sight checking would have been fine. But alas - most audiences haven’t evolved past our physical bodies yet. It’s funny that I always talk about not forgetting your audience on this blog. I didn’t forget - I just forgot they were made up of corporeal beings.

With big audiences and especially on a stage that has no or minimal elevation, make sure your visual aids get the extra elevation if needed.