Power Point presentations

[21121956]

Hello everybody:

For some years I have given (with the help of power point) conferences on technical issues to engineers and electromechanical technicians.

After the presentations I have given the attendees in print the thumbnails of the slides.

At present, acting as a mentor, I have been asked to give a conference on hydraulic turbines. The organizers of these days of continuous training have asked me to facilitate the presentation as I will present it.

My questions to the honorable members of this forum are: 1 Do I have to give the material of the presentation in full power point? 2. The material (i.e. photos of turbine parts destroyed by failures, technical data, etc.) of these presentations is the collection during several years of professional practice. Is it normal that in such an easy way the assistants can have access to that information stored in a USB memory?

According to the experience of the members of the forum, what is the correct procedure in circumstances like the one I am exposing?

Thanks in advance.

El que no puede andar, se sienta.

 

[21121956]

Hello everybody:

By way of clarification to my post, I consider it necessary to point out that, on this side of the planet, there are plenty of engineers who could take that information contained in the presentation to prepare their own presentations, ignoring the original author or source.

El que no puede andar, se sienta.

 

[MacGyverS2000]

You can always place a conspicuous watermark across a non-important portion of the image, but do it in such a way that removal of the watermark by cropping the image results in an image that is obviously trimmed.

Another method might be to provide them with a PDF of the presentation, perhaps 4-to-1 slides per page so they're small, but make sure the images are sufficiently low-quality as to prevent useful copying into another presentation. They can still see the important information, but it won't be useful in a presentation of their own.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[ProEpro]

Easy options. Use the compress picture option in powerpoint and lower the resolution to something really bad. Create the PDF in black and white.

Hard option. Create a separate version of the slides with all the images you don't want to share removed.

Assume any digital file will find its way onto the internet.

 

[jari001]

I'm not sure why the organizers would need to have your material ahead of time. My guess is that they want to compile all presentations in one place to make logistics easier or maybe make some marketing type material? If there is some acceptable reason for them to need access to some or all of your work ahead of time, I agree with MacGyverS2000's first suggestion. I also second ProEpro's advice about any digital files ending up on the internet. You might even see attendees just take pictures or video of your presentation on their phones.

 

[IRstuff]

There are obvious watermarks and non-obvious watermarks, and both can be used to catch plagiarists. Steganography is the non-obvious approach, can be either spread across the entire image, or specific pixels can altered. Also you can put identifying information in the metadata of most images.

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[21121956]

Hello everybody:

I really appreciate your opinions. I think I will make a combination of them. Thanks a lot.

El que no puede andar, se sienta.

 

[CWB1]

Having been paid to create and distribute presentations hundreds of pages long, IMHO presentations will never be at the depth of a properly written technical paper or textbook so why worry about protecting it? 100% of what you share should be in the public domain already, so other than "feel-good" there's really no loss if shared.

 

[Compositepro]

Just place a copy write notice on your slides.

 

[271828]

I wouldn't provide PPT files. Can you provide pdf handouts with two slides per page, with watermarks on the photos? That would seem to solve the problem.

As an aside, in case it's useful to anyone:

I have a new way of using PowerPoint that is light years ahead of standard death-by-PowerPoint. It has received extremely favorable reviews from every group. After my last short-course, an engineer reported that our course was immeasurably better than any other course he had ever attended.

My method is as follows: I provide a pdf or paper handout with two slides per sheet. The slides are partially filled in. Any blocks of text (there are few of these, and they're brief), pictures, and most figures are included, but that omits about 1/3 to 1/2 of the material. During the presentation, I write the remaining material -- mostly equations, easy figures, and a little text -- on the screen using a stylus and MS Surface Pro 6 tablet. The students transcribe this information onto their handouts.

This approach keeps the students very engaged. I get many more questions when I use this approach. My last workshop had 12 hours of lectures and I don't think there was a time when a student's eyes were glazing over like they often do after 15 minutes of death-by-PowerPoint.

It would be very cool if some others tried this and reported back.

 

[21121956]

Hello everybody:

Once again, thanks for your inputs.

CWB1, I agree with you that, the vast majority of the information provided in the presentations, is public on the web, except that which is not published due to the privacy of the company where there was a failure in their equipment.

The point is that, after you prepare the presentation, this is: gathering data, photographs, summarizing, etc. in which you spend a lot of time and effort, it turns out that someone who attends that conference after an hour has all that information in their possession, as well, without having made the least effort and, now he/she has information for their own purposes.

By the way, these presentations in PPT that I offer are a contribution of mine to the association of engineers to which I belong. I don't receive two cents.

If I am mishandling this situation, I would appreciate your comments. If I am wrong and I have to change my point of view, I will.



El que no puede andar, se sienta.