A week ago I went to an international conference where I had to give a presentation. I was confronted with an unpleasant surprise when I wanted to deliver my presentation.

Glass surface
The conference was held in an expensive hotel in Majorca (Spain). The rooms had a fast Internet connection. Only when I checked out I discovered I had to pay for the connection. There was a luxurious desk in the room, unfortunately covered by a nicely looking glass plate. As could be expected my optical mouse did not work on the glass plate. I always bring a cordless optical mouse for a number of reasons: I prefer a mouse over a touch pad and I use the mouse during my presentation. My improvised solution was a that I slid a sheet of paper under the glass plate.

Conference room
The presenters were supposed to put their laptop on a reading desk present in the conference room. Against my principle I did not check this out before my talk. When it was my turn I discovered that the nicely styled reading desk had two bad properties: (i) the laptop had to be put in there in an almost vertical position and (ii) it was fully made out of transparent perspex.