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.

Check the Final Program for presentation type and session.

• Poster presentation: sessions numbered nP (i.e. 1P, 2P, etc.)
• Oral presentation: all other sessions, 18-minute time slot (15 minutes delivery maximum + 3 minutes questions)

Poster Presentations

The poster session area will be set up with double-sided boards approximately 4ft high by 8ft wide, with two poster positions on each side and will fit two posters on each face (either A0 size, 841 mm wide by 1189 mm high, 33.1 inches wide by 46.8 inches high, or A1 size, 594 mm wide by 841 mm high, 23.4 inches wide by 33.1 inches high, or US Standard Poster 24 inches wide by 36 inches high).

Fixings to attach the papers will be available. The author(s) will provide all poster papers. The posters must be hung before the start of the listed poster session time, and an author must be present during the entire designated period for that session.

The heading should list the paper title, author(s) name(s) and affiliation(s). It should be in bold face type and readable from a distance of ~2 meters (~6 feet). The abstract should summarize the pertinent results and conclusions. The introduction should state the purpose of the work in relation to previous work in the field. The results section should indicate the most important findings. The conclusions should give the interpretation and the significance of the results. References to previous work may be appropriate. The font size for the headings of the abstract, introduction, results, conclusions, references, and any other sections, and the text and the captions for figures and graphs should be readable from a distance of ~1 meter (~3 feet). While the poster paper does require some text, e.g., in the abstract, conclusion and references sections, at least one-half of the poster area should be devoted to figures, graphs or photographs: the adage about one picture being worth 10,000 words is relevant in this case.

Authors are encouraged to check their posters' correctness via a trial run with their colleagues at their home institutions rather than seeing it for the first time at the conference.

The poster sessions are 90 minutes in duration, and authors should be prepared to address many attendees during this time period.  It is recommended to have a quick summary (10 seconds) to grab the attendees’ attention and then transition into an iterative conversation based on the interests of that attendee. 

Oral Presentations

Time Allocations

Full oral presentation slots are 18 minutes long in total—that includes questions and handovers. To allow for questions, aim for your presentation to be about 14-15 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.

Session chairs will hold you to time, and are under strict instructions to terminate presentations that overrun.  If your presentation were to overrun, you are effectively stealing time from colleagues that follow you.  Strict adherence to timing within sessions is also required in order to allow attendees to move between sessions.

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 Final Program. Presenters should provide the session chair with a short biography of 2-3 sentences maximum.

Presentation Slides

Prepare a reasonable number of slides, to meet the recommended 14-15 minutes for full oral presentations (which allows for questions at the end). Typically, one illustration is presented in one 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.

Full oral presentations should be clearly structured and begin with a title page. Include a summary outlining the presentation. State the basic problem clearly, including the application area. Summarize background and previous work to provide a prospective for the results presented in the paper. Highlight the innovative approach taken. Describe the application of the approach to the application problem, pointing out the main features and characteristics, the problems and the solutions. Results should be clearly outlined and evaluated. Present appropriate comparisons with previous results. 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: Be courteous to your colleagues and keep to your time slot. DO NOT OVERRUN.  If you risk it, you may end up without the opportunity to present your conclusions, which are the most important part. Authors travel from all over the world to make their presentations. Every author deserves to give their full presentation at the designated time in the program, overruns steal time from your colleagues, may force them to shorten their presentation or miss the next session, and may cause interested attendees to show up at the wrong time or leave in the middle of a presentation.

Equipment

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

• Projector Screen
• LCD Projector