Forum Moderators: not2easy
I come from an academic background, and I have a couple of specialist websites that are well known in my field (non-commercial). I sometimes give talks to various groups of people also, at academic meetings and elsewhere. On those occasions, I put together a slideshow (Powerpoint) about the material on my websites, but organized differently as befits an informal talk rather than a static website.
I'm going to a conference/convention next month, and one of the many messages I got from them said, "Be sure to forward a copy of your Powerpoint to us so we can distribute it."
My first thought was, "The hell I will; you're not distributing my slideshow." Having gone to many academic conferences, no one would ever think of asking such a thing. It's like buying a ticket to a concert and bringing your camcorder, and then openly selling videos of the concert without the artist's permission.
I've come to realize that this 'conference" is really more of a business convention, and that's a habitat I don't know very well. If you were a speaker at such a convention, would you assume they had the rights to a copy of your computer files that they could then distribute? (This was not specified in the registration materials certainly; I'm doing them a favor by speaking and paying the registration, they aren't paying me.)
-----------
The only area I'm really familiar with is medical research, and I know it operates differently from other academic areas in many ways. So I don't know how applicable any of the following is --
The doctor I work for is an internationally-known cancer researcher (he has a syndrome named after him). If he speaks at a conference, he does get his registration, airfare, and accommodations paid for, and usually a nice stipend as well, so this might not fit your situation. But from my experience with his lectures, what you're describing sounds perfectly normal. We send his PowerPoint presentations ahead of him all the time, often to be used as a handout.
I think a big difference might be that most people presenting at conferences don't have websites like yours, and their presentation is just, well, their presentation. It doesn't really have any other uses. (My boss gives a somewhat different presentation each time, to fit the subject the conference has asked him to speak about, but he "recycles" lots of individual slides, and that's certainly expected.)
What the people on the other end usually want is a handout so the audience can follow along with your lecture more easily. If you don't want to supply them with your PowerPoint, you could ask them if an outline of your talk would serve the purpose. Unless they've got some kind of motivation that I don't know about, they'll probably be fine with that. Asking for the presentation is usually a way to save the presenter time and effort - It's a lot easier to send off the PowerPoint file than it is to write up yet another outline of the material.
There are occasional times when I'd say it's necessary to provide the file: Some conferences load the presentations ahead of time to make it easier to show them in multiple halls, and if there's going to be any kind of an audience test at the end they may need to have that set up beforehand (my boss did one once that was set up for the audience members to respond to the test questions electronically from their seats, so, of course, the questions that were going to be shown had to be programmed in ahead of time along with the correct answers). But if all they want is a handout for your lecture, I'd ask them if they'd accept the outline instead.
While I can't speak for conferences in your field, it's pretty standard to make the slideshow available in mine (open-source programming)--quite a few presentations have a last slide telling you where to get the slides if you want them. The last conference I went to recorded the presentations and made the video files available for download.
At those conferences, presentations are generally meant to educate people or spread the word about some cool new thingy the presenter wants people to check out. Since the entire point of the presentation is to give people the information in the presentation, it makes perfect sense.
But if the point of your presentation is to make people take notes or awe at your brilliance, it may not make sense to provide your slides. I'd say you've every right to refuse proffering the slides, but you ought to consider why you're giving the presentation, and if providing the slides would fit with that reasoning.
The choice here is yours - do you want your presentation distributed? If not, that's your right and their problem. Whilst in some respecs the distribution of presentation materials is pretty standard - it's invariably taken for granted - the "standard practice" here is what's standard for you - not them. If you feel that there is value in this information being further disseminated, great. If not, it's tough for them.
Obviously you'll need to weigh up the pro's and cons in this situation. Is there any merit in having your presentation distributed? Will distribution, if people normally have to visit your website to gain this information, impact positively or otherwise on your online resource? Is broadcasting your work and the site it can be found on a good or bad thing? Your call.
As for:
I'm doing them a favor by speaking and paying the registration, they aren't paying me.
Hmm, this depends on the exact nature of the conference and your own standing within the sector. We used to organise a business exhibition & conference in the UK a few years ago. Whilst the high profile speakers would be paid (they serve as a sort of star attraction), the rest of the speakers were experts drawn from industry who were happy to lecture freely in order to help raise their professional and personal profile as well as the profile of their business/service (sometimes the same thing!).
One thing is absolutely certain - you should not be expected to pay the registration fee!
Much in the same way, I have over the years commissioned loads and loads of 'experts' and 'industry leaders' to write for various publications I've worked on. None of them have ever been paid - they've all done it to raise the profile of whatever it is they're representing (including themselves)!
They only do this, however, because they know that the medium through which they are communicating is worth it. It doesn't matter whether it's a newsparer or magazine, website, conference, TV/radio broadcast.
Syzygy
