Can I have a gripe here? Just a little one?

Just lately, chance has dictated that I find myself moving in rapid succession from one webby/communications/social media conference to another (and another). My job is to surprise people with the fact that the European Parliament is actually rather ahead in terms of its institutional peer group in this kind of thing. It works well in the more parliamentary conferences, where a fair proportion of the gathering is often still quite wide-eyed about the possibilities offered by Facebook et al, maybe less so in the more web/communication events where half the participants start twittering the event before boarding their planes to the venue. I jest not. (At such events, every move you make is inevitably filmed and uploaded to YouTube before you’re home. Dangggg! Did I say that?)

One thing 99% of these events have in common though is the business of the powerpoint presentation.

How it's done. Would he send you his slides?

No, this is not going to be a whinge about those presentations where slides full of dense type illegibly reproduce the text read out too fast (or way too slowly) by the presenter. Nor do I intend to complain about complex tables and slightly askew pdf scans projected incomprehensibly behind the talking head responsible. (Inevitably a seated and immobile talking head in such cases.) I am not even going to moan about 200-slide shows or dodgy animations – you know the sort – featuring wandering ovals and mid 1990s text art splurging improbably onto the screen to make some not-very-interesting point surrealistically not-very-interesting.

No, I am not going to mention any of that. My gripe is a different one and concerns the moment when the conference organisers ask for an advance copy of your “slides”.

There is a variant, whereby they ask for a copy afterwards “so we can put it on the website”. This is also problematic, but at least avoids some of my deeply-felt objections to these practices, which are as follows:

First, requests to send in the slides presume the slides are ready, and, if they are not, put you under pressure to finalise your presentation early. Now that might work for some, but I suspect that that is not the way the creative process works for many people. OK, I may be finding rationalisations for my chaotic and last-minute working habits, but, hey, this is me and you asked me to do the presentation, right?

My presentation weighs in at a meaty 150 MB. So how am I supposed to send it? Chopped up into small bits? Or even in a special “lite” version? Ugh! Alas, my art…

Second, practical issue no. 1. You want my presentation. You want it by email. But because I have slaved over a magnificent graphical presentation, full of wonderful hi-res photography and maybe even some cool video footage, my presentation weighs in at a meaty 150 MB. So how am I supposed to send it? Chopped up into small bits? Or even in a special “lite” version? Ugh! Alas, my art…

Third, practical issue no. 2. Yes, the curse of the evil monopolist. People ALWAYS say: “could you send us your powerpoint?” But what if my presentation is NOT powerpoint? Now I know there’s a kind of snobbery about these insufferable Mac-using types who think that they are superior to mere mortals, but the problem is that not they, but the presentation software they use IS actually superior to yer bog-standard powerpoint show. So the moment always comes when the conference organisers need to be appraised of the fact that the file in question is a Keynote presentation designed to be shown from a Mac (which, by the way, I intend to plug into your beamer in the conference hall – no problem there, I trust?), and therefore will be of little use to them anyway. Conference organisers rarely enthuse at this news, though the presenter may secretly rejoice at the infallible excuse to hold back his creation. (“Insufferable Mac-user” is probably right, actually.) I have to mention one way out of this impasse which is truly horrific: to export the Keynote file to a Powerpoint file. This is possible, but I am convinced that Apple engineers have deviously written the code to ensure that, though the outcome is recognisable and usable, it is also truly horrible to behold, full of inferior graphics and clunky transitions. Ha! Take that.

Fourth, and here we get more philosophical, what is a presentation for? Surely it is to illustrate my talk. Hopefully it will have nice pictures, delighting the senses, stimulating associations and assisting the memory. It will pick out key words, key figures, add value, provide an extra dimension. But if it just says what I say, why did I bother turning up at all? If it is a self-standing document comprehensible in its own right, I may as well have saved the fare…

Why should I hand out the fruit of my creative juices copyright-free to any Tom, Dick or Harry? You wanna see it, you show at the conference. So there!

Fifth, …and that goes for the audience too! Somehow it doesn’t seem right. If your slideshow lives independently of your actual presentation, what is the point of anyone being there? Conference organisers have an interest in grasping this point. The point of a conference is to be there, to hear the presenter speak, to be inspired, bored, enlightened or annoyed by what is said… Do you imagine that all those starry-eyed fans who pack the Moscone Center in San Francisco to hear Steve Jobs show them a new iPod would be just as happy if he “sent over his powerpoint”? Now, boy, I ain’t no Steve Jobs, but there is a point here somewhere about, ahem, art, isn’t there? Why should I hand out the fruit of my creative juices copyright-free to any Tom, Dick or Harry? You wanna see it, you show at the conference. So there!

I can hear the mob of social webbers howling at my gate already – it’s all about sharing! How dare you withhold your presentation from us? But stop guys, we have the internet now. We can post stuff that’s suitable for sharing, stuff that is useful when viewed at home or in the office, stuff you can post to Facebook, YouTube, whatever you like. But how about we agree to protect that rare flower – the moment, just being there?

Disclaimer: if any conference organisers, those nice people who have asked me for my slides, read this, please don’t take it too hard. I know you just want the conference to go smoothly and meet the expectations of all those eager participants. I know, because yes, I’ve done it myself – asked for the slides…