Picture yourself speaking to an auditorium filled with attentive listeners. You have prepared a great speech and they are enjoying every word of it.

Then, you start noticing a few snickers. The girl in the red sweater on your right suddenly elbows her neighbor. He smiles and elbows his neighbor. You notice that very few people are looking at you. In fact, most of the eyes in the room are aimed down, at laptops and other mobile devices. You, fellow Toastmaster, are being backchanneled. So, what do you do?

Mashable blogger Cliff Atkinson recently shared some good advice about how to stop a backchannel from turning into a total disaster. One of the most important things you can do is to know that this will happen. Understanding that a backchannel is not only possible, but very likely, is your first step. I don’t know about you, but I never really ever thought about it.

Cliff offers some good ideas for turning lemons into lemonade. I think you’ll find it helpful.