“Student Blitz” Oral Presentations Guideline

Plan

Each presenter will have 9 minutes to give their oral presentation, followed by 3 minutes Q & A session.

Prepare

• When preparing your presentation, use Helvetica and Times New Roman fonts. An unusual font may not translate to the computer used for presenting.
• For tables, note that PowerPoint's default settings allow only nine rows and columns, set at 32-point font size. Avoid overriding these defaults by adding rows or columns and decreasing font size.
• In "Page Setup," size slides for "On-Screen Show" or "35 mm Slides." Select horizontal (landscape) layout.
• Use standard fonts, such as Times, Helvetica, or Arial and Symbol. Space is lost and the amount of information per slide is reduced by repeating graphics (including logos), busy backgrounds, and decorative typefaces.
• Enhance the legibility of text and diagrams by maintaining color and intensity contrast. Use white or light yellow text and lines on black or dark blue backgrounds, and use darker colors on white or light backgrounds. LCD projectors used in session rooms have a limited range of colors - avoid red or dark green on blue, and avoid yellow on white.
• Test your completed presentation on a separate PC-compatible computer to ensure that fonts are standard and components, such as movies, have been included rather than merely linked.

Present

Those giving oral presentations should arrive the conference hall at least 30 minutes before their presentation begins.

The conference hall contains the following:

• Two screens for lectures
• Two video projectors
• One PC computer with open USB ports for flash drives
• Software: PowerPoint 2010 and Adobe Acrobat Reader 10 (PDF-based) Presenters using other software should save their presentation in PowerPoint 2013 or Adobe Acrobat Reader 10.
• Audio system with microphones
• One laser pointer

To avoid setup delays, authors giving computer projection presentations should load their presentation on a Windows-readable USB flash drive. Presenters must bring a copy of all external files in their PowerPoint presentations. This includes movie or sound files (.wav, .avi, .mpg, etc.). Authors can use their own laptops, but should recognize that the additional setup cuts into presentation time.

Presenters are highly recommended to send your presentation slide before the conference to the organizer to check your presentation for technical compatibility.

If you use your own laptop, review the following:

• You must have a VGA 15 pin HD female VGA output.Note: some mini laptop computers have a special interface cable that attaches to their video output to hook up to external monitors or data/video projectors. If this cable is not with the laptop computer being used, there is no way to connect it to the session room data/video projector.
• Know how to get the image to the external port of the laptop. Instructions are in each laptop operator's manual. (If the external port is not always "on," it is usually a function key, or combination of shift plus a function key, that may turn on the external port, or possible cycle through laptop screen, external port, or both.)
• The laptop output resolution should be no more than XGA (1024 x 768). The native resolution on the data projectors is 1024 x 768, so higher resolutions will force the data projectors into a compression mode, possible losing some information or interfering with projection.
• The most recent version/update of drivers must be installed on the device used.