You can prepare for everything: the slides, the mic, the sound, the room, the speakers, the notes, and the images.

And then, midway through the session, you lose power for a fraction of a second, and you disappear.

You can always prepare, but some things will always trip you up.

The response isn’t to prepare less or to accept chaos.

Know which risks are controllable and prepare for those properly. Know which aren’t, and build recovery capacity instead of prevention capacity. A UPS battery, a co-facilitator briefed to hold the room, a printed slide pack, and a session that can survive a 15 second gap.

And accept that some failure is not preparation failure. It’s just weather.