new section on site.

I recollect that we did this last year or the year before... Don;t know here the list ended up but I think it was a case of club reps emailing someone in IFAS for the list of speakers and their talks...

Dave

Hi folks just to clarify

1. i propose a LIST of ppt presentations that people would have no problem sharing. eg albert presentation on light pollution.

2. the presentations would still be stored on owners pc's.

3. it was me that tried to do this before and it didn;t work. no harm trying again

4. Being down in kerry doesn't help when most of the speakers are in dublin. it will mean someone taking two days off work

We understand what you're saying re the list Trevor.
What perhaps wasn't fully appreciated by us here was where this idea developed from - i.e. the difficulty in getting speakers down to Kerry mid-week.

It is hard to get speakers to kerry, but that is only a tiny part of my motivation. We had a talk by a local club member last night on comets and it was great, but he must have spent a MASSIVE amount of time and effort researching it and putting it together.

i just think that there must be a huge amount of material already researched and in ready to present formats that we as astronomy clubs can share with each other and take some of the load off.

Having given a few talks myself I can testify to the fact that the preparation takes very much longer than the delivery. Whilst the idea of sharing presentations is ostensibly a good one in theory, there are practicalities to be considered.

Firstly, a PowerPoint is far from being all of a talk. One of the biggest challenges I was ever given in my professional life was being handed someone elses PowerPoint and being told to deliver the key points to the BoM at an hour's notice! I did OK, and even coped with some of the ensuing questions, but in the amateur astronomy community folk really do ask hard questions and it's there that the presenter's depth of knowledge is key.

Secondly, when I write a PowerPoint, it contains only the bits I want to show on screen. The rest is in my head.

On the matter of copyright, I either (mostly) use my own images, or if not then I use public domain images, or those from one whose permisssion I have sought and won, and in the latter two cases give credit to the copyright owner(s).

Just my thoughts. I'd be happy to join in such a scheme BTW.

Trevor,
Have you considered using Skype for your lectures?