Wish you were here!

hsr Proceedings in intensive care and cardiovascular anesthesia 2012, Vol. 4 Corresponding author: Prof. Michael John Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele Via Olgettina, 48 20132 Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected] not familiar with this hardware. Help! I need somebody. Help! Over the hill rides the cavalry, in the form of the technical assistance team. These amazing professionals are always present at congresses, and are, of course, incredibly helpful when it comes to setting up and managing our presentations. Of course, on many occasions we are obliged to send our presentations to the congress organizers beforehand, as they need to upload everything onto their server to simplify events and make sure that everything is, indeed, uniform and without hitches and glitches before the congress starts. On other occasions, we arrive at the venue with our personal laptops, or maybe iPads, and need to connect to the projector in the congress hall. This too is sometimes not as easy as it might sound. This is where the technical team moves in and shows us which buttons to press on our PC, or which cable adapter we need for our Mac in order to be ready for the show. Let me just give you an example. I have made one or two presentations in my time, but several months ago, while attending an international anesthesiology workshop in Barcelona (Spain), I ran into one of the finest teams of technical professionals I have ever had the honor to meet. We met up for a pre-workshop briefing, together with the organizers of the meeting, in the hotel where the congress was to Nowadays, each and every congress speaker should have at least the basic knowledge required to deal with those technical issues that might occur before and, more importantly, during the oral presentation. Whether it is a Mac or a Windows machine, we all have to know which buttons to press, which switches to flick, and which adapter cables to use in order to guarantee a seamless flow of data during our Keynote or PowerPoint presentations. Radio-frequency remote controls with integrated laser pointers, cable or cordless microphones, and iPhone or iPod remote slide changers can all help make our job easier, making us all seem like extremely professional public speakers. Hang on just a moment! What on earth am I insinuating? On many occasions our slides have been prepared by one of our collaborators, and we might not have even taken the time to look through them before reaching the congress venue that, more often than not, might mean that we have been catapulted to the other side of the planet. The amazing video we wanted to show is nowhere to be found, and those excellent images just show up in the slides as blanks. I am not familiar with this software. I am Wish you were here!