Information for presenters

Guidelines for Oral Sessions

  1. The conference will be equipped with a computer video projector and a computer that is connected to the projector for each oral presentation room. The computers are equipped with Windows XP as well as Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 (Office XP), and Adobe Acrobat Reader. PowerPoint is the preferred projection software offered at the conference. If the PowerPoint versions in your computers are newer than that used in the conference, please save your presentations in the older version for compatibility. Otherwise, you will not be guaranteed that your presentations will look exactly the way you wanted them or even work at all!

  2. Presenters are expected to arrive at the session room at least 15 minutes before the session starts. This allows for time to put the presentations on the computer and discuss details with the session chair.

  3. The session chair will use the biography in your paper to introduce you. If there is no biography in your paper or if you want another introduction, please provide the chair with a short text, preferably printed.

  4. The maximum duration of the presentation should be 12 minutes and 2-3 minutes Q&A session. 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. 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.

  5. Look at guidelines for presentations or practical tips below for further guidelines.

Guidelines for poster sessions

The venue for the Interactive Forum sessions will be the glass roofed hall in the Elektro building, room G-100.

The poster format should be approximately 85 x 120 cm, portrait (ISO A0 is quite suitable). Do not make the posters too small, and avoid hanging up a copy of your paper. Push pins will be provided. There are no tables, so it will not be possible to use a computer.

Authors should set up their posters at least one half hour before the start of the session (08:30 start in the morning and 13:30 start in the afternoon). All papers must be presented in person at the conference in order to be included in the published proceedings appearing in IEEE Xplore.

A sans-serif font is recommended with title fonts a minimum of 48 points, author and affiliation fonts 40 points, and text fonts 28 points. Table and figure captions, references, and acknowledgments can have smaller font sizes. A PDF tutorial on using PowerPoint to create a poster is available here.

Important points should be highlighted and arranged in a clear sequence. Graphical elements take on increased significance in the poster format and should be utilized accordingly. Do not simply reproduce your paper in large type. If more than one page or sheet is used, it is recommended that these be numbered in the order in which the authors wish them to be viewed. Colored tape used to connect the units can be a helpful guide for the reader.

Additional tips for making a successful poster:

  • Plan your story before you begin.

  • Headings should be in uppercase and lowercase, not all capitals.

  • Do not use capitals or underlining to stress your point; use boldface font instead.

  • Leave "breathing space" around your text. Don't overcrowd your poster.

  • Try using photos or color graphs. Avoid long tables or long text blocks.

  • Spell check and proofread your poster.

  • Whenever possible, attach legends directly to your plots rather than using a legend box somewhere in the frame.

Guideline for Presentations

  • Show no more than 1 slide per minute of speaking time. This means approximately 10-12 slides MAXIMUM for the 12 minutes of 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

Practical Tips

  • Avoid Font Problems: Since your computer may have sophisticated fonts (such as special equation symbols) that the conference computers do 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 would be incomprehensible. In addition to the default ".ppt" file format, we suggest that you also save a copy of your presentations in the ".pps" (PowerPoint Show) format for safe (the ".pps" 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.

  • Movies or Videos: If you have movies or videos, the best way to present them properly is to use your own laptop computers since the conference computers may not have the Codec software that is necessary to play your movies or videos. In principle this should be possible, but discuss with the chair and AV assistant before the session, and make sure to have an alternative presentation without movies or videos in case this is difficult to realize.

  • USB Thumb Drives: the conference computers will be equipped with the USB 2.0 interfaces. However, some USB drives may have security or driver issues that may prevent the drives from being recognized by the conference computers. Make sure your presentation is readable on another computer than the one you copied your files from. Please scan your USB drives to remove viruses if there are any before you bring them to the conference.