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Speaker and Session Chair Guidelines
High-quality presentations are essential for the success of SIGDOC 2001. To
help you plan your presentation for SIGDOC 2001, I have provided, in this
document, important information about the audiovisual equipment that will be
available in the meeting rooms, along with guidelines to help you prepare and
deliver your presentation. Please read this note carefully and do not hesitate
to contact me if you have any questions.
Scott Tilley (stilley@cs.ucr.edu)
The Setting
Your presentation will be held in one of the meeting rooms of the La Fonda
Hotel. The presentation rooms vary in capacity, but each room will be equipped
with one standard computer projector ("beamer").
NOTE: You are responsible for providing your own notebook computer to
connect to the projector, and ensuring that the two devices work properly. There
will be technical support available onsite. Please orchestrate this process with
your session chair.
Your Session, Meeting Your Sessions Chair
Each session has a session chair who will coordinate your session and
introduce you. Check the SIGDOC program for the name of your session chair.
Make sure you (1) meet your session chair before your session so s/he will
know who you are; (2) meet your session chair at least 15 minutes before the
beginning of your session; and (3) give a short one-paragraph typeset or neatly
handwritten biography to your session chair to introduce you.
Out of respect for your fellow speakers, be present at the beginning of the
session in which your presentation occurs.
Your Presentation
Here are some helpful hints for both the preparation and delivery of your
high-quality talk:
- The SIGDOC audience draws participants from a wide variety of areas,
from academia, government, and industry. Make sure that your talk includes
enough background material and motivation so that it can be understood by
those who are not specialists in your area. It is a good idea to have one
slide of your talk on motivation and one slide on related work to set the
stage.
- Check the conference web site at www.cs.ucr.edu/~stilley/sigdoc2001
for the time allotted for your talk. Most SIGDOC 2001 presentations are
allotted 30 minutes (25 minutes for talk, 5 minutes for questions). Special
talks, such as keynotes, are allotted more time.
- Use at least 24 point type for body text and at least 28 point for
titles.
- Use a limited number (i.e., 1-3) of typefaces for your entire
presentation.
- Use colors effectively. Light text on dark background projects
better with a computer beamer. This is the opposite of what is used for
transparencies.
- Important: Use PowerPoint animation very sparingly. It is
rarely justified to use more than one click (keyboard, mouse) per slide/page.
Animating individual bullets (i.e., one click for each bullet on a slide) is
usually inappropriate for a SIGDOC 2001 presentation. Excessive animation
results in talks where the animation is more important than the contents.
Moreover, completely animated or timed PowerPoint presentations (i.e.,
"click-less" talks) rarely work for a SIGDOC audience because a single
question can mess up the entire talk. Avoid the "new PowerPoint user" syndrome
whereby the presenter tries to use too many of the fancy PowerPoint features
and ends up spending more time figuring out the sequence of slides rather than
focusing on the content while giving their talk.
- Always speak to the audience, not to the screen.
- Speak slowly and clearly. Pauses that seem long to you are usually
quite fast for the audience.
- It is critical that you present your talk and answer questions in
the time allotted to you. If your time slot is 30 minutes, then your
presentation should be 25 minutes with 5 minutes for questions. Your session
chair will manage the talks in the session and keep speakers on track. It is
important to have some time at the end of your talk for questions
Here are some useful resources with hints and instructions for preparing
high-quality talks:
Experience has shown that following these simple guidelines can greatly
improve your presentation. Have a great conference and remember: enjoy! :)
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