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Presentation Instructions

Platform Sessions

Presenter Guidelines

Presenters in all Annual Meeting sessions are required to use digital projection of a PowerPoint presentation. PowerPoint presentations should be prepared for use with PowerPoint XP in a PC compatible format. If you have developed your presentation with an earlier version of PowerPoint, or have developed it on a Macintosh platform, it SHOULD project properly, but we encourage you to preview it on a PC with PowerPoint XP BEFORE arriving at the meeting to ensure that it will project properly.

The presentation of a slide talk or computer presentation is quite different from the presentation of the same information in a journal article. Keep in mind that in a slide presentation, you have only 20 minutes including Q&A.

  1. Prepare your slide to communicate ideas, not details. If attendees want details, let them ask you in the Q&A period.
  2. A table in a published article is much too detailed for a slide presentation. Take the time to think through what conclusion you want to present from the table and present the least amount of material you can to communicate that idea. A graph or photograph may better communicate your data.
  3. A slide presentation should include a title slide, a slide stating the question or hypothesis to be addressed, and a slide describing the overall approach you used to address the question. A "methods" slide should be included but should never include the details of the method unless the purpose of the talk is to describe the method. The next several slides should present the results obtained, and a final slide should give the conclusions of the study.
  4. Review your presentation on a different machine from which it was originally prepared to ensure the backgrounds, transitions, video clips, graphics, and linked images appear properly.

Instructions for Giving a Platform Presentation:

Presenters in all Annual Meeting sessions are required to use digital projection of a PowerPoint presentation.

  1. Arrive at least 30 minutes prior to the beginning of your session and introduce yourself to the chairperson. Provide appropriate information to him/her for your introduction. Uploaded presentations will be downloaded on the computer for you before the session starts.
  2. Upload your presentation by 4:00PM the day before your Session. Be sure to check the Presentation Services Desk for the location of the presentation preview area. One of the most effective contributions to a presentation is well-prepared slides.
  3. The electronic projection equipment available in each room will include a Pentium III PC (450MHZ) laptop equipped with Windows XP and PowerPoint XP. Please bring a backup of your Power Point presentation to the meeting on a USB Memory Device or CD. It is highly recommended if you are a Macintosh user to test your presentation on a PC to verify it converts to WINDOWS format accurately. There will NOT be any MAC equipment available.
  4. Schedule. No scheduling change can be made. You have been allotted a total of 20 minutes, including discussion for your presentation. The chairperson has been instructed to require all speakers to adhere to this limit: fifteen minutes for the presentation, five minutes for discussion.
  5. Should circumstances prevent you from making your presentation, you must arrange for a substitute to present your paper and you must notify your session chairperson as well as SETAC Headquarters.
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