The year was 2001 and I was doing a guest speaker spot on presenting at a prominent foreign university. The speaking points were commited to memory, the slides and video were all prepared and I was superbly groomed. About two hours before I was to stand up and deliver I met with the event sponsor and his tech guys and did my best to walk them through the presentation. I had organized the talk into three "big buckets" covering style, content and impact. Each bucket had two or three subpoints.

I...