Information for Presenters

Plenary Speakers

Plenary speakers are welcome to use the laptop in the Breakwater Ballroom or their own laptops for presentation. HDMI and USB-C connectivity will be available. The AV team will work with speakers to set up individual talks and make sure that specific needs are met.

If using audio or video files in your presentation, please make sure to set up your talk early with our AV team. Allow at least one hour before your talk to make sure everything works properly.

If you would like to use the laptop provided in the Breakwater ballroom, please bring your talk in PowerPoint or Keynote on a USB thumb drive. Make sure you have a backup on email, or Dropbox, in case the thumb drive has compatibility issues.

Symposium Speakers

Symposium speakers will use their own laptops to present. Speakers in the same session are highly encouraged to consolidate their talks on one laptop to save time in transitioning between talks and to avoid connectivity issues.

Symposium Chairs should determine ahead of time which speaker’s laptop will be used and make sure talks are formatted properly.

Open Papers / Lightning Talks

Open paper speakers may use PowerPoint, Keynote, or PDF for their presentations and are asked to keep their talks to a maximum of 10 slides (excluding title and acknowledgments).

Lightning talk speakers will only have a SINGLE slide to present, and it must be in PDF format with no animations. Slide should represent only ONE major finding and not have lengthy blocks of text.

All open paper and lightning talk slides must be uploaded using the Dropbox links provided by email by 12:00 PM on Wednesday April 26.

A laser pointer will be available in each room for use by the presenters.

Staying on Time

All conference talks must stay on time. With such a busy schedule, even a few extra minutes for one speaker can compromise the entire session. Session chairs are asked, encouraged and incentivized to be very strict with timing. If a speaker exceeds their allotted time, the session chair will be forced to use Squawky, pictured on the right, which is far more effective than the Oscar speech-ending play-off music and only slightly less controversial.

Each room will be equipped with two timers, one for the podium, visible to the speaker, and one to the session chair/timekeeper. Talk times are as follows:

Plenary talks ............................................... 40 minutes

Each talk also includes a 5 minute introduction, and a 5 minute Q&A period after the talk.

Symposium talks ....................................... 15 minutes

Each symposium includes 4 talks, 15 minutes each, followed by 2-3 minutes of Q&A and a 30 minute general discussion at the end (50/50 rule; see below).

Open papers ................................................10 minutes

Each open paper is followed by 2 minutes of Q&A. If the speaker desires additional time for Q&A, the talk can be shortened to 8 minutes.

Lightning talks .............................................. 5 minutes

Each lightning talk is 5 minutes and is limited to 1 slide in PDF format (think digital poster). It is followed by 1 minute of Q&A.

50/50 Discussion Rule

Following our time-honored tradition, symposia are designed to facilitate ample discussion. Exactly 50% of the alloted symposium time must be used for discussion, in an attempt to resolve issues and collectively decide on future experiments. This means timekeepers need to be vigilant about ensuring that all speakers stay on time and that sufficient time is preserved for discussion.