Simon Willison’s Weblog

What’s your opinion on sharing your presentation slides (online for anyone to access) after speaking at an event where eventgoers paid to hear you (and others) speak?

18th November 2013

My answer to What’s your opinion on sharing your presentation slides (online for anyone to access) after speaking at an event where eventgoers paid to hear you (and others) speak? on Quora

I think sharing slides is almost always the best thing for everyone:

• It’s good for the event attendees, as now they can easily find the slides online later (rather than having to access a locked-down site somewhere, or get emailed large files which they then have to store themselves). It also makes it easy for them to share some of what they learned with their co-workers.
• It’s good for you. You probably spoke at the event to share your knowledge and increase your reputation, and posting slides online means that more people than just the attendees get to benefit from your knowledge.
• It’s good for the event organiser: if your slides become popular online, their event gets a reputation as a high quality event, which means they’ll find it easier to sell tickets to their next event.
• It’s good for everyone else, since they get to benefit from your slides too.

Event attendees know that they’re not just there for the information in the slides: they’re there to network with other attendees, learn from the speakers directly, and energise and inspire themselves. These are things which can’t be got from reading through a set of slides onine.

The only exception here is if the event organiser asks you not to share the slides—especially if they paid you for the time it took to prepare a unique presentation as well as your flights and hotels. I’d try to convince them otherwise, but I’d obey their wishes.