Presentation Instructions

Below are guidelines for presentation, to ensure that presentations can successfully serve their primary purpose of communicating authors’ ideas to conference attendees, and to make presenters aware of some organizational details.

Time Allocations

Oral presentation slots are 18 minutes long in total—that includes questions and handovers. Session chairs will hold you this time, and are under strict instructions to terminate presentations which overrun.  If your presentation were to overrun, you are effectively stealing time from colleagues which follow you.  Strict adherence to timing within sessions is also required in order to allow attendees to move between sessions.

To allow for questions, you should aim for your presentation to be about 13-14 minutes long. Longer presentations mean that only a single question can be accommodated, or even none at all, and questions are often the most interesting part for both speaker and audience. Remember to include the ‘why’ of your work - not just the ‘how’, and avoid the trap of trying to squeeze in too much detail. Attendees will be able to read your paper at their leisure if it sparks their interest. Practice and time yourself.

Meeting with Session Chairs

All presenters are to meet with their session chair, in the scheduled room in which they will be presenting, 20 minutes prior to the start of the session. The session chairs will be identified in the Program Guide. Presenters should provide the session chair with a short biography of 2-3 sentences maximum.

Presentation Slides

The presenter should prepare a reasonable number of slides, so as not to exceed the 18 minute time slot. Typically, 1 illustration is presented in 1 minute. Additional illustrations could be prepared to support possible answers to questions from the audience. Each slide should not be crowded by text and graphics. Too much text should be avoided: illustrations should support the presentation; they should not be simply read by the presenter. Graphics help in communications, are more understandable, and point out the basic ideas. Use large fonts (18-20 point) so they can be read easily.

Presentations should be clearly structured and begin with a title page. A summary should outline the presentation. The basic problem should be clearly stated, as well as the application area. Background and previous work should be summarized to provide a prospective for the results presented in the paper. The innovative approach should be clearly stated. The application of the approach to the application problem should be described, by pointing out the main features and characteristics, the problems and the solutions. The results should be clearly outlined and evaluated. Appropriate comparisons with previous results should be presented. Conclusions should summarize the work performed and point out the main innovation and results. Future work and developments could also be sketched.

All presenters who wish to use the LCD projector should bring their computer with presentation slides to the meeting with session chairs, 20 minutes before the start of their session. Some presenters may be willing to share their laptop during a session; such arrangements should be made well in advance of the session. Do not show up at the session start time with your slides on a USB key hoping someone will lend their computer: arrive early, ask to borrow a computer, and test your presentation. Common presentation formats are Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT) and Portable Document Format (PDF).

Remember your talk may not overrun.  If you risk it, you may end up without the opportunity to present your conclusions, which are the most important part.

Equipment

The standard equipment available in each of the presentation rooms is as follows:

• Projector Screen
• LCD Projector