Presentation Guidelines

Guidelines for Speakers and Oral Presenters

The official language of the Symposium is English. Each oral presentation time is allocated 20 minutes. We recommend that presentation of your slides should take about 15-16 minutes, leaving 4-5 minutes for introduction, summary, and questions from the audience. To achieve appropriate timing, organize your slides or viewgraphs around the points you intend to make, using no more than one slide per minute. A reasonable strategy is to allocate about 2 minutes per slide when there are equations or important key points to make, and one minute per slide when the content is less complex. Slides attract and hold attention, and reinforce what you say - provided you keep them simple and easy to read. Plan on covering at most 6 points per slide, covered by 6 to 12 spoken sentences and no more than about two spoken minutes.

Make sure each of your key points is easy to explain with aid of the material on your slides. Do not read directly from the slide during your presentation. You shouldn’t need to prepare a written speech, although it is often a good idea to prepare the opening and closing sentences in advance. It is very important that you rehearse your presentation in front of an audience before you give your presentation at IGARSS. Surrogate presenters must be sufficiently familiar with the material being presented to answer detailed questions from the audience. In addition, the surrogate presenter must contact the Session Chair in advance of the presenter’s session.

A computer-driven slideshow for use with a data projector is recommended for your talk at IGARSS. All presentation rooms will be equipped with a computer, a data projector, a microphone (for large rooms), a lectern, and a pointing device. An overhead projector will be provided upon request.

It is important that the sessions remain on time. The session chair is responsible for keeping presentations on schedule. Any setup time you use is part of your overall 20 minute presentation time, so it is a good idea to check your visual aids before the session begins.

Presenters should locate their session room in due time and be in the room 20 minutes before the session room begins to meet with the session chair, who should be near the stage/lectern. Presentation shall be uploaded to the computer at the registration desk via USB flash memory stick at least two hours prior to the session start. Presenters are advised when uploading their presentations to check if formulas/animations are shown correctly.

Please do not attempt to use your own computer to connect to the projector. For speed and efficiency, use only the conference-provided computer for displaying your presentation visual aids.

Guidelines for Poster Presenters

Poster sessions are a good medium for authors to present papers and meet with interested attendees for in-depth technical discussions. In addition, attendees find the poster sessions a good way to sample many papers in parallel sessions. Thus it is important that you display your message clearly and noticeably to attract people who might have an interest in your paper.

Your poster should cover the key points of your work. It needs not, and should not, attempt to include all the details; you can describe them in person to people who are interested. The ideal poster is designed to attract attention, provide a brief overview of your work, and initiate discussion. Carefully and completely prepare your poster well in advance of the conference. Try tacking up the poster before you leave for the conference to see what it will look like and to make sure that you have all of the necessary pieces.

For each paper accepted within a poster session, one board is reserved for your use. You will be able to use the full width of one board. The poster is not required to fill this entire space, but it cannot be any larger than the board size.

The boards will be arranged in rows. Each reserved paper space will be assigned a number. Every paper being presented at the same time will also be assigned a number. The number, called the Board Number, will identify the place to post your poster. Authors are requested to: 1) put up their poster at least 1 hour before the session start; 2) stand by their poster during the poster session (from 10:20 to 11:20); 3) remove their poster just after lunch time.

IMPORTANT: There MUST be a presenter standing at the poster during the entire scheduled poster time. A poster that is mounted to the board, but without any person presenting it will be considered a no-show!

The title of your poster should appear at the top in CAPITAL letters about 25mm high. Below the title put the author(s)' name(s) and affiliation(s). The flow of your poster should be from the top left to the bottom right. Use arrows to lead your viewer through the poster. Use color for highlighting and to make your poster more attractive. Use pictures, diagrams, cartoons, figures, etc., rather than text wherever possible. Try to state your main result in 6 lines or less, in lettering about 15mm high so that people can read the poster from a distance. The smallest text on your poster should be at least 9mm high, and the important points should be in a larger size. Use a sans-serif font (such as "cmss" in the Computer Modern family or the "Helvetica" PostScript font) to make the print easier to read from a distance.

Make your poster as self-explanatory as possible. This will save your efforts for technical discussions. Prepare a short presentation of about 5 minutes that you can periodically give to those assembled around your poster throughout the 1 hour poster session. If possible, more than one author should attend the session to aid in presentations and discussions, and to provide the presenters with the chance to rest or briefly view other posters.