How To Connect Your Laptop To A Projector or Screen VDU (video display unit)

When you travel to give a slide or video presentation you need to check that your laptop will connect up. When you are in a one to one meeting you can share screens if you sit side by side. But, in most rooms you want to display your visuals on a large screen.

Why Do You Need Visuals?

• A welcome slide gives the early arrivals something to look at. So they are not wasting time. Nor are they getting stressed, nor annoyed. 
• You look professional and well prepared.
• If you speak quietly or a plane or siren or singing next door interrupts so they can't hear they can still see the message.
• They may forget, but you can re-show your opening slide at the end to reinforce the point and to update laecomers.
• You can list your credentials in an impartial manner.  without sounding boastful, nor leaving out essential information because you feel shy and modest.
• 
  
• You can ensure nothing is forgotten.
• The audience can photograph your slides to take home to their groups, or as a reminder.
• You can be photographed in front of an informative slide, which looks more interesting and professional than just grinning at the camera.
• Those who are hard of hearing can get the essentials from the slide.
• A glossary of essential words and technical terms can be displayed.

You might also need:

• The company motto.
• The company song.
• A motivational song. (Only 8 seconds.)
• A rousing march to put them in a good mood and make them feel energetic.
• A seasonal song such as, We wish you a merry Christmas at Christmas.
• A love song for Valentine's day.
• The words of a song you wish them to sing.
• Or a hymn. 
• Or Auld lang syne (with a translation, such as Old Times' Sake.).
• Or happy birthday. (Or the translation into Spanish or the Japanese language or Tagalog, the language of the Philippines.) 
• The words of a promise or pledge you wish them to make. 
• Or a prayer. 
• Or a vow.

The Technical person or organizer should call all speakers, and in fact the entire audience in case a speaker drops out at the last minute and somebody else takes over.

If you are the meeting or conference organizer, remind your technical person or Sergeant at Arms who sets up the room with flipcharts and video and audio equipment to check with all speakers what they need.

Telling people that the meeting starts at 7 when you want to start at 7 is frequently a recipe for disaster, a third to a half of the people will turn up just before the start. If they arrive early, they go off for coffee, spend extra time combing their hair, or look around the nearby shops or take selfies with themselves and friends in the lobby.

Time Needed
Allow five minutes per speaker. When a speaker arrives, if the techie is busy with the first speaker, he or she has no time to deal with the second and third speakers, which means a delay for their set-up mid-meeting.

Sometimes the cables have to be taken out of a cupboard and plugged in. Sometimes cables have to be collected from the admin office which could be on the ground floor when your meeting room or auditorium is on the fifth floor or higher.

Delays
The chairman, realising that key people, such as the technical expert are missing, might delay the start of the meeting.

For Delays
Why delay? So that the technical person who is being helpful is not punished by missing the opening.
To the missing person does not interrupt the opening speech and welcome.

Against Delays
This infuriates those who have arrived ten minutes or half an hour early. Especially if they are Judgers on the Myers Briggs personality type test.

A screen is called a Video Display Unit or for short, VDU.

Connectors Needed
You might go to one venue where you don't need a connector. A well-organized storage cupboard will have the required cables for all eventualities.

Just because your home club or the one you visit regularly has the cable you require, does not mean that every venue has one.

In a large auditorium, you may have.
Thumb drive - loading it takes time.
Know where your thumb drive is.

This takes another five minutes to
Find the files,
Load them onto the thumb drive,
Get the helpers laptop brought forward,
Load in the correct set of files from the thumbdrive,
Find the first slide.
Adjust the display so the slide is on the screen and not half on the wall, nor too small to read.
Call back the chairperson who has wandered off to socialise or network.
Tell both the chairperson and/or toastmaster of the day that you are ready to start.

Having once or twice come a cropper, I now know:

I need to carry a spare connector at all times.
To co-ordinate in any venue I need:

1 A VGA socket. (Video graphics array. 30 years old but still used.)
2 HDMI (High Definition Media Interface)
3 Display Port

If in doubt, ask the convener to send a photo of the connection at the venue.
If returning to the same venue, take your own photo of the correct connector and socket before leaving.

Packing List
Laptop
Power brick
Mouse
Thumbdrive
Slide show (Powerpoint, the Microsoft program, Keynote on Apple, Mosaic)
VGA socket
HDMI
Display Port

About the Author
Angela Lansbury is a travel writer and photographer. She currently (2020) attends a toastmasters International speakers training club once or twice a day.