I attended an NRAS meeting on Tuesday last week. A talk about gut bacteria and how it effects RA . It was a power point presentation.
I'm sure it was really interesting but I became so distracted with the amount of mobile phones being raised to take pictures of what was being shown on the screen and lowered again that I lost the thread. I've been going to this group for the past 7 years and it's never happened before I shall think twice about attending again. How do others feel about this?
Could it have been because some attendees were recording information to pass on to others who were unable to be there?
Or the ‘brain fog’ many of us get with RD means we may find it difficult to remember things and a photo of a slide is helpful?
The speaker and organisers should have foreseen this, have made arrangements to provide the information and told the attendees how it would be distributed before the session began. Then one can politely request phones are put away!
I think that’s dreadful. Most of the presentations I go to they offer to email a copy afterwards to anyone interested, which is much less distracting. Or even have paper copies of the slides - old fashioned but effective!
The pictures taken with phones could well be fairly blurry anyway.
Ask the organisers to request people don’t do this and offer an alternative.
Surely that is part of the 'housekeeping rules' ...mobiles switched off or on silent if needed, as it was when I used to give presentations and as you rightly say helixhelix, I always had many paper copies to hand or indeed could forward them to the attendees if needed in another format. Again surely it poses the question if they are taking photos they may accidentally include other attendees within the room which I would feel is an invasion of people's privacy. I would feel uncomfortable and somewhat distracted as a presenter let alone an attendee if people were clicking away and holding a mobile up. Again it is about respecting others, which was another housekeeping rule.
I think people should ask if they can have a copy of the information afterwards. Most people giving a talk would be able to send out a copy of any particular slide or slides. It can be very distracting. Bring it up with the organisers, they may not have thought about it.
Was that the one at NOC Oxford? I was thinking to go but didn't make it.
I haven't been to one yet, I'm worried they would be too formal? think I would prefer a coffee and a chat type group instead.
Anyway, that would be off putting but I suppose it's just the way things are now 🙄
Was the event recorded on video? Or are NRAS members able to access the PowerPoint presentation somehow?
I’m not well enough to travel to these group events atm, even my nearest which is in Frimley, and would have welcomed the opportunity to access somehow the presentation given in Oxford.
I was at the Edinburgh NRAS meeting recently, we were informed that the ppt presentation would be made available to us.
Photographing ppt slides such as you describe is very common place now, unless the speaker makes it known the slides will be available. It happens in college/university lectures too.
Personally I think it is unacceptable and disruptive, but I guess I'm an old fashioned kind of girl.
I guess I'm old fashioned too and I don't think I could have coped presenting or concentrated while people were holding up phones....it's a bit like someone getting a big bag of toffees out with noisy wrappers at the theatre/ cinema! 
Whatever did we do before the mobile phone?
Hi, I was at that meeting - I was in the back row and didn’t disrupt anyone!! I did take some pictures but then made the mistake of thinking I could ask for the presentation. Sadly, he wasn’t able to provide it because of copyright issues. I wish I had taken more now.
This was my first meeting and I went because I wanted to learn more about my gut biome and how I could possibly reduce my symptoms. Normally I wouldn’t take photos but on this occasion I wanted to read further on the subject. I think many people were like me and wanting to see if there was anything we could change/do. I’m sorry if we disrupted your listening.
Sounds like a very interesting subject and I too would be interested to know more too. I'm just a little confused though and I say this in a caring way if there were copyright issues be careful as it may cover taking photographs of the images from the presentation. I understand from presenting courses in the past that copyright isn't always straight forward. Take care
Hi mickey1
I agree with all the replies but am replying myself as I'm very interested in the subject of the talk itself. Did you manage to pick anything up about how the gut microbiome affects RA? Were you given any information in another format after the talk? Or told where to find more info? Hope today's one of your better ones 🙂
Hi All
Just been reading your comments and we are aware of the meeting you are referring to. Unfortunately, as someone has already mentioned here, the slides were not available to share on this occasion. Speakers are usually happy to share their slides and this is often requested, but it does depend on what the content is and whether there are restrictions of any kind. I will pass the feedback on to the volunteer that runs the group so she can consider the use of mobile phones at future meetings.
NRAS Group meetings are not currently recorded or formally minuted as the meetings are intended to be somewhat informal and are all run by local volunteers who are all living with RA themselves. This is one of the reasons we at NRAS started the webinar programme, to allow those who aren't near to, or aren't able to get to NRAS Group meetings. The webinars have some of the top speakers in their field and we endeavour to host sessions on topics that are of greatest interest to those living with RA and inflammatory arthritis.
We do hope to host a webinar in the future on the gut microbiome, and we will of course promote the details widely when we have found the right expert speaker to do this with.
In the meantime, if you are interested to take a look at any of the NRAS webinar recordings from 2018 and 2019 so far, please visit our website here: nras.org.uk/webinar-recordings
We have two more live webinars coming up before the end of the year and you can sign up aand check out the details here: nras.org.uk/webinar
Best wishes
Kim - NRAS
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