When going over room setup and audio / visual requirements with a foreign logistics person, make sure you do it in advance of the presentation (hopefully several times), and have a bilingual person there to ensure that both you and the logistics person are on the same wavelength. Be in the room very early on the day of the speaking engagement (at least two hours before the public enters the room) and, if possible, have your bilingual helper there too. Terms that are familiar to most English speaking speakers are difficult to translate into a foreign language.

Speakers face all sorts of variables that can and do go wrong, from broken audio-visual systems to less time than they prepared for. You may tell yourself you're no good at speaking--or succeed one time and do poorly another, for reasons that escape you. But if you haven't taken the time to think through factors like your personality type, gender and how you handle anxiety, you won't really know .