Each talk has been allocated a 10-minute slot, but a short time will be required for the changeovers amongst speakers, so please ensure that your talk is no more than 8 minutes long. Session chairs will be ruthless! Remember that you are speaking in English to a multinational audience. More than ever, this means that:
(a) it is essential to speak clearly and slowly; and
(b) ensure that each point that you make is clearly summarised as bullet points – this is not the usual style when presenting to a same-primary language audience.
(c) point (b) does not mean that you just read out every slide – we all know how boring that can be in whatever language!
(d) There is no hard rule but for an 8-minute talk we would suggest no more than about 10 slides including the Title slide and Acknowledgments.
(e) Whilst it is important to acknowledge fundraisers and colleagues, avoid reading out a list – it can just be shown on a closing slide.
Practice with a timer and ideally record it (you can do this with in PowerPoint for example) so that you can listen to yourself (and/or ask a colleague to listen) to ensure that you are within the 8-minute period and that you are not speaking too fast. Remember that sadly, the limited
time means that it is not possible to go off at a tangent (however tempting that is for all of us), so – without sounding like you are reading a script – stick to it!
Do not be overly ambitious. In the time available you need to give a short background to the context of your work but do not dwell on this too much. The focus should be on the method (for recognised techniques there is no need to focus on this, for newer techniques there will
be a need), the main results and especially the conclusions. Remember that you are not salesperson – it is good science to talk about any uncertainties (which are usually inevitable).
Some obvious general guidelines apply that you probably already know but are provided for completeness:
(a) The format of the presentation should be 16:9. Use high contrast colours for the background and text.
(b) Use large font sizes that can be seen from the back of the room. We would suggest that you avoid using a font size less that 18pt. As an example, the slide heading could be around 40pt, major bullet points around 26pt and sub-points around 18-20pt.
(c) Avoid complex tables with many cells if you want your audience to take them in – again using a font size of about 18pt will help you keep it reasonable.
(d) Similarly avoid complex graphs – simplify them to make your point and ensure that axes are labelled and legible.
(e) PowerPoint and similar programmes have a lot of clever tricks and animations (many of which are merely distractions) – use them SPARINGLY and only if they assist the audience – it is your science people want to hear not to admire your skills.
As the symposium will have an online component, we intend to broadcast the Plenary sessions live to online registered persons. To help people who are in challenging time zones we would also like to record the sessions and make them available to registered persons for at least a
few days after the session. Each speaker will receive a form asking for their permission to record their presentation or not and make it available.
All talks will be projected from a symposium laptop loaded with the latest version of PowerPoint. It will also be able to project pdf slides, of course. If you have any doubt about your software (or if you are embedding video or sound files and want to be sure that they work)
please consult the organisers as soon as possible (orcasymposium@circe.info). Please email your submission at the latest two days before you are presenting.
