Oral Presentation Guidelines

Observing Your Allotted Time

  • The total time allotted to each speaker is 15 minutes. You should plan to speak for 12 minutes and leave 3 minutes for questions.
  • Invited speakers have twice this time, 30 minutes in total, and they should plan to speak for about 25 min, leaving 5 min. for questions.
  • There is NO EXCUSE for using more than your allotted time. Rehearse your presentation several times; projecting slides and doing anything else you would otherwise expect to do at the meeting. It is a discourtesy to your audience, the Session Chair and the other speakers to exceed your allotted time. The Session Chairs are instructed to adhere to the printed schedule for the session. With parallel sessions this is critical to the overall success of the conference.

Organization of Oral Sessions

  • There are eight parallel sessions in the conference and the Technical Program Committee will try to minimize conflicts of topics between parallel sessions.
  • The conference will be equipped with a computer video projector and a computer that is connected to the projector for each oral presentation room. Normal audio equipment such as microphones will be provided.
  • The computers are equipped with Windows 10 as well as Microsoft PowerPoint 2016 (Office), Internet Explorer/Edge (latest), Adobe Acrobat Reader DC/Flash Player, Windows Media Player 12 and QuickTime 7.
  • To submit (upload) the presentation data, use the unique (personalized) link to the paper management system. The unique link to the paper management system will be emailed to the presenting author. Please upload the presentation materials no later than 24:00 (PST), Thursday, 18 October 2018.
  • All the authors are requested to (a) visit the Speaker Ready Room at least one day prior to the session, (b) verify their presentation for compatibility and proper operation. If necessary, especially if you have embedded multi-media content, you will have the final opportunity to adjust or tweak your presentation at that time. We suggest the presenting author to bring his/her own computer and a USB thumb drive with presentation materials as backup.
  • Since your computer may have sophisticated fonts (such as special equation symbols) that the conference computers may not have, it is suggested that when you save your PowerPoint presentations, use “Save As” from your “File” pull-down menu. When a dialog box pops up, click on the “Tools” menu on that dialog box and select “Save Options”. Then, check the option “Embed true type fonts”. Click “OK” and then click “Save”. This allows you to include the fonts you are using in your presentations to minimize the font incompatibility problems. Otherwise, any fonts that are not recognized by the conference computers will be incomprehensible. In addition to the default “.pptx” file format, we suggest that you also save a copy of your presentations in the “.ppsx” (PowerPoint Show) format (the “.ppsx” version may also include some of the special fonts in your presentations). If you have a full version of Adobe Acrobat, we suggest you also save (or print) your presentations into a “.pdf” format and thus you will be able to use the free Adobe Reader software to present in case nothing else would work.

Good Practices

  • Show no more than 1 slide per minute of speaking time. This means approximately 10-12 slides MAXIMUM for the 12 minutes presentation at the symposium. Remember, the last three minutes of the presentation are for questions from the audience. It detracts from the quality of the presentation to flash numerous graphs, equations, or tables on the screen in rapid sequence in an effort to squeeze a presentation into its allotted time.
  • We recommend a presentation format of 16:9, 4:3 is also acceptable.
  • Make the letters on your slides BIG ENOUGH. Suggested minimum font is 14.
  • Put no more than 12 lines of text or 4 curves on any slide.
  • Avoid lengthy tabulations of numerical data and limit equations to those for which the terms can be properly defined.
  • Your audience needs time to interpret the data that you present. While you are very familiar with the data displayed, the audience is not. Describe the abscissa, coordinates, units and the legend for each curve.
  • When you display a curve, tell the audience what they should be looking for in order to grasp the point you are trying to make. The audience will not have time to figure it out for themselves.
  • Use repetition in your talk to ensure the facts are understood by the audience.
  • In addition to the body of the talk, present an introduction and a summary or conclusion.
  • Include only information or data that can be properly explained in the allotted time.
  • Repeat any questions that are posed to you.
  • If a question requires a lengthy reply, suggest that you and the person asking the question meet after the presentation. Then take the discussion out of the meeting room.