Dear Sun,

You recently asked for my feedback as a previous attendee of JavaOne. I'd like to add the following to my comments about how to improve things:

Please, please, don't force the trademark lawyers to change my presentation.

Each year the lawyers get to hack about with my presentation. Last year I had a slide that said DWR could:

"Use Java EE role based security to declare roles that can access methods"

However, this got changed to:

"Use Java™ Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE platform) defined role based security to declare roles that can access methods"

And when I claimed that DWR could marshal:

"JavaBeans and Objects"

This was changed to"

"JavaBeans™ architecture and Objects"

This is now technically incorrect - DWR can't marshal the entire JavaBeans Architecture - it might be cool if it could, but it can't.

The logic behind the trademark changes are that Sun are seen as the publisher of the presentations, so for them to publish the talks without proper trademark usage could lead to a case that Sun have lost their trademarks.

However, in reality, Sun have published in literally thousands of places on the web without the correct trademark phrasing. The (TM) symbol is missing from virtually every use of the word 'Java' on Sun's website, so why confuse presentations by insisting on strange phrasing there. Why not worry about java.net, where I can freely alter text without worrying trademark lawyers?

Please, please, make the presentation template ultra-minimalist.

How many of the presentations on SlideShare would be improved by the use of a standard template? Talking of which, this presentation is one of the most popular presentations ever on SlideShare ever. It would be destroyed by a template.

The presentation from Asa Raskin's brilliant talk "Don’t make me click" from the Ajax Experience was just a series of icons, where the point was made through the icons. Again, a presentation template would have destroyed the talk. The same goes for Dick Hardt's seminal "Identity 2.0" talk from OSCon 2005.

Many postings on Presentation Zen are about the problems of bullet points, but the presentation templates encourage people to use bullet points and to get sucked into the trap of reading from the slides.

I totally understand the need for some branding, but it doesn't need to be on every slide, and it shouldn't discourage people from being creative in how they present.

I like creating a good presentation, but whenever it comes to creating a presentation with a mandated template, I feel that some of the opportunity for creativity has been taken away, and the presentation suffers as a result.

Thanks for listening,

Joe.

What do you think? Is a conference helped by having a common theme across all presentations?

Update: Hani makes the good point in the comments that there is time in the 'Speaker Ready Room' to fix the problem. This is true, and I've spent several hours doing just that. However, if Sun just dropped the whole lawyer review thing, they could push back the deadline for slides, which might mean that talks were not 6 months out of date by the time they were presented.

Responses[2]

Posted by Joe Walker on 29 November 2007 13:03:33 GMT #