Paper Presentation Guidelines
1. Length of presentation. All presentations have a 30 minute presentation window. It is recommended for contributed and theoretical presentations to be 20-22 minutes in length and for preliminary presentations to be 15-17 minutes in length. The two minutes are intended to be a buffer in case your presentation runs long. Your end time should not go past the 17 or 22 minutes depending on your type of report. The remaining time should be dedicated for Q&A and audience interaction. You will let your room moderator how you would like them to count you down with timing cards.
2. Preliminary Report presentation. All preliminary report presentations must end with a slide that presents questions to the audience. These questions should connect with the section in the paper that explains the preliminary nature of the preliminary report. Authors can use the list of questions that they included in the paper.
3. Presenter notes. If you want to use presenter notes and are in person, you need to use these directions. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZTQnQtxSZEX7tNMV4q2DNYTKp6YuuOH1/view?usp=sharing
4. In-Person Presentation. Because the conference will be hybrid, when presenting in person, you will log-on to the zoom room linked to the in-person room you are in (URL will be provided) and share your screen in the zoom space. You will then present normally. If your laptop has a camera, please turn it on so that the virtual participants can see you. Your slide deck will be projected in the room and the zoom space will capture your voice. In short, the only difference when thinking about presenting in person compared to other times is you will be sharing your screen on zoom.
5. Back up presentation. Bring a backup of your presentation on a USB flash drive so you can use the AV computer in the room in case of technical difficulties; however, this should only be a backup. You are expected to provide your own computer for presenting.
6. Virtual Presentation. If you are presenting virtually, you will navigate to the room in Gather space where your talk is scheduled. More info on accessing Gather space will be provided as we get closer to the conference. in this room is a zoom link to log on. Log on, share your screen and present as you normally would through zoom. There will be a moderator in person who will put the in-room camera on themselves and hold up timing cards. You can request they type into the chat as well if that is helpful. The moderator will help get in-person questions to you via the in room microphone.
Poster Presentation Guidelines
1. The #betterposter format. Continuing our practice from last year, we have a Poster Session Support Team. The team aims to organize the session in a way to increase engagement, efficiency, and accessibility in navigating the session. To support this goal, the team is recommending that you use of #thebetterposter format (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYk29tnxASs). You can skip ahead to minute 1:25 of the linked video to see the design.
The main goal of the format is to allow attendees to be able to walk through the room and get a very good idea about what each poster is about (accessibility, efficiency).
- The way to do this is by putting the main takeaway of your research at the center of the poster in a large font and everyday language (accessibility).
- A QR code allows people to get a copy of your paper if they want to prioritize other posters (efficiency, engagement).
- The most basic three column design gives space for people who want to read quietly by themselves without getting in the way of other people who might want to engage more deeply after reading the main takeaway of your paper (engagement).
When attendees already know the main takeaway of the poster, they would be able to ask a deeper question than, "Can you tell me about your poster?" (engagement). As a community we would optimize the benefits of this new format when the majority of the posters follow it.
The full video presents the motivation, the research support for the redesign, and the number of professional scientific conferences that have redesigned their poster session. The poster support team is available to offer help for people to incorporate this new format.
2. Responses to the new format. We have used this format at the conference for the last two years. We had a good participation from presenters with a majority of posters utilizing the new format. Moreover, from the conference survey we learned that many attendees reported being able to quickly learn the main takeaway of posters, with presenters reported having spoken with more people than previous poster sessions. These are the intended outcomes of adopting the new format. Please see the 26th RUME Proceedings (http://sigmaa.maa.org/rume/RUME26_Proceedings2024-letter.pdf) for examples of how presenters that year designed their posters. You can also use the following linked template (https://s-ink.org/betterposter-poster-template) for #thebetterposter format.
3. Two additions to your poster. If you don't have time to incorporate the full #betterposter format, please add these two things to your poster:
- A main takeaway sentence of the research in a large text and everyday accessible language in the center of your poster. Constructing this takeaway sentence is a very good practice. Traditionally we attempt to give people an idea about our poster with the title, but titles often include technical language and exclude study findings.
- A QR code to your paper. If you have not done so before, you paste the link to your files from a cloud storage (Google Drive, Box, or Dropbox) to https://www.the-qrcode-generator.com/ Then you can download the image file of your QR code. Others can then access your files by scanning the QR code on your poster using their mobile devices.
4. Poster dimensions. Physical Posters will be provided a science fair style tri fold board for mounting their posters. Posters should be printed at 48 inches wide and 36 inches tall.
5. Poster printing. Lastly, if you need, there is a FedEx 1.5 Miles from the conference hotel in Alexandria that you can use to print out their poster (685 N Washington). There is also a location 2 blocks away but they do not have a large enough printer; however, they can send out for it to be printed with a 24 hour turnaround (they will send it to the place that is 1.5 Miles away).