How to Stay Cool in the Face of (workshop) Adversity

The big difference between an information-based workshop and an information-technology-based workshop is the "unpredictable incident factor". People are notorious for unpredictable behaviour, especially when under stress, whereas technology is known to be reliable.
That's the theory anyway.
So being, why were the members of the workshop team so uptight two nights before the workshop? Might this theory need reviewing?
Monday evening - when we should have been relaxing with the newly arrived participants at a local 'café littéraire' - saw us downing our cocktails with rather undignified haste and rushing back to the ECML where, during the preceding technology dress rehearsal (checking computer programs, internet connections, switches between computers and presenters, doing a sound check, making sure the video projector, the VCR and the remote control that managed everything from bringing the screen down to dimming the lights were functioning alright) practically nothing worked. Well, don't let me exaggerate. People worked. They worked themselves into a positive frenzy. Some of us discovered the body's amazing capacity to dredge up stress symptoms from decades earlier: twitches from long-forgotten ulcers, black spots before the eyes indicating a sudden rise in blood pressure. Of course, the casual visitor wouldn't be able to see any evidence of these symptoms under the calm demeanour of us five professionals.
Luckily for us (or unluckily, depending on how one interprets subsequent events), it wasn't a casual visitor who dropped by, but the in-house technological whiz-kid, Michael Armstrong, also known as the ECML accountant. Being pretty bad with money myself, I can't judge his talents in that field, but as far as finding solutions for technological 'casse-tête' are concerned, it's hard to find adequate terms of praise, he's just …. well, let's just say we all breathed a sigh of relief when he 'happened by' just as we were despairing at the apparent hopelessness of being able to present any information and communication technologies on the first morning of the workshop with the possible exception of the intricacies of the human larynx. I say 'luckily' he dropped by, because with the exception of Seppo, we instantly gave ourselves permission to dump our problems in his lap and envisage getting a little sleep that night, and I say 'unluckily', because it soon became apparent that not all of our problems were due to the incompetence of people not entirely familiar with the ECML setup.
But don't worry. Everything went fine. The fact I'm here to recount our misadventures proves how resistant human beings are. We won't let those beastly electronic gadgets get the better of us, will we?
"Er, Michael…..where are you?"

P.S. If you want to feel good about yourself and your electronic engineering capabilities, we'll keep you posted about our ongoing catastrophes on the BSCW platform (check the 'unforeseen incidents' folder) because, as everyone knows, you can learn a lot when things go wrong.
I can't speak for the Norwegians (Anne-Brit), the Colombians (Cecilia), the Austrians (Gunther), or the Finns (Seppo), but that's why we Brits (Daphne) have such stiff upper lips.

To see a photo of the workshop team just before panic hit, click here.