Presentation Instructions

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

Poster Presentations

The poster paper material must fit in a space 120 cm (4 feet) square. The poster session area will be set up with double-sided poster boards, 240cm by 120cm (8 feet wide by 4 feet high); each side of the board is divided into two sections for two papers to be presented per side. Fixings to attach the papers will be available. All poster papers will be provided by the author(s). The posters must be up 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.

Oral Presentations

Time Allocations

Oral presentation slots are 18 minutes long in total - this slot 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 that 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. Presenters should have a short biography of 2-3 sentences maximum to give to the session chair at this time.

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 so they can be read without a major effort; typically 18-20 point fonts should be used.

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).

Equipment

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

• Projector Screen

• LCD Projector

• Lapel Microphone

• Flip Chart and Markers