Instructions for Presenters
A MS Word version of this document can be found here.
Please find below some potentially useful material to assist you in preparing a presentation for the 2009 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC/URSI National Radio Science Meeting.
Papers are to be presented in two basic formats: Interactive Forum (Posters) and Oral Presentations. Below you will find specific information concerning these two formats. To find out the particular format of your paper, as well as its presentation time, please consult the advance program located at http://www.apsursi2009.org/Final_Program_2009.pdf
If for any reason you find yourself unable to personally present your paper, please try to arrange for someone else to present it. If nobody is available to present your work, you must notify the Technical Program Chair well ahead of time (at lazzi@ncsu.edu). As per IEEE directives, papers that are not presented will be removed from the version of the proceedings that goes onto IEEE Xplore.
Interactive Forum (Posters)
The venue for the Interactive Forum sessions will be the Exhibit Hall, which is located on the first level of the Embassy Suites Convention Center (the conference venue). Individual rectangular boards will be available for each author, to which to attach their presentation material (paper copy). It is then essential that you arrange your entire Interactive presentation to fit this 111.8 cm high by 233.7 cm wide (44 inches high by 92 inches wide) rectangular area. Please note that the boards are arranged with the horizontal axis as the larger length. Push pins, and/or Velcro tape will be available, but authors should also bring their own push pins, or Velcro tape to avoid delays. Note that electronic presentation aides are not available for the interactive forum.
Your poster presentation should be easily readable from 1.5 to 2 m (5 to 6.7 feet) away, since people will view it standing or as they are walking by. The following character sizes are recommended:
PaperID & Title: 16.5 mm (66 points) high –Arial font;
Author List : 10 mm (40 points) high –Arial font;
Affiliation : 8 mm (32 points) high –Arial font;
Text : at least 7 mm (28 points) –Arial font;
Table captions : at least 5 mm (20 points) –Times or Times New Roman font;
Figure/Picture captions: at least 4.5 mm (18 points) – Times or Times New Roman font;
Your PaperID can be found on the technical program posted online at http://www.apsursi2009.org/2009TechnicalProgramforWebsite.pdf. The PaperID has the format IFXXX.Y where XXX is the session number and Y is the paper number within the session. (Examples: IF113.1, IF113.2,..etc.) Please note that this is different from the Paper#, which will have a format of Paper#zzzz. A 5-8 line abstract is strongly recommended. Important points should be highlighted and arranged in a clear sequence. Graphical elements take on increased significance in the poster format, and hence should be utilized accordingly. Do not simply reproduce your paper in large type. Poster sheets are usually arranged to be viewed from left to right and from top to bottom, for an attractive and logical flow of information. It is recommended that the sheets be numbered in the order in which the authors wish them to be viewed. Colored tape used to connect the units can be a helpful guide for the reader. It is often useful for the viewer to have a reprint of the paper as complementary information. This can be made available as a handout, and should be provided by the author. Business cards are also useful for establishing contact with interested viewers of your paper.
Additional tips for making a successful poster:
*Plan your story before you begin.
*Headings should be in upper and lower case, not all capitals.
*Do not use capitals or underline to stress your point, use bold instead.
*Leave breathing space around your text. Don’t overcrowd your poster.
*Try using photos or colour graphs. Avoid long tables or long text blocks.
*Spell check and proof-read your poster.
*Whenever possible, attach legends directly to your plots rather than using a legend box somewhere in the frame.
Authors are requested to have their material mounted at the assigned location before 9:30 on the day of the presentation, and should be present at their stations for the duration of the session, from 11:40 to 13:20, to discuss their work and answer questions, as there will be a flux of attendees. All papers must be presented in person at the symposium in order to be included in the published proceedings appearing in IEEE Xplore.
The session chair(s) for your session will have a Feedback Form where they will mark whether or not your paper was presented during the session. If the Form indicates that the paper was not presented, it will be automatically withdrawn from appearing in IEEE Xplore. Thus, during your session, please approach the session chair and make sure that he/she has marked your presence.
Please also note that if you have been selected as a finalist in the Student Competition, and you are scheduled in an interactive forum session, it is then required that you present at both the regular interactive forum session and the Student Competition interactive forum session.
Oral Presentations
All oral presentations have been allocated a 20-minute time slot. These 20-minutes must include the presentation, questions, and any discussions. It is then strongly recommended that speakers plan on a 15-16 minute presentation to allow for 4-5 minutes of questions; speakers typically cover at most one to two slides per minute. Each room will be equipped with a personal computer running Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Office 2007 (with PowerPoint and Equation Editor), MathType, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Flash (to handle Flash animations), and Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer 2007. The presentations must then be produced and be ready to run in at least one of these formats. The room will have a projection screen and the computer will be connected to an appropriate LCD projector. Authors should ensure that their presentations are loaded onto the computer in their assigned room 15 minutes before the beginning of the session. To facilitate checking presentations before the scheduled session, there will be a speaker preparation room (with an appropriate personal computer) at the conference venue. All papers must be presented in person at the symposium in order to be included in the proceedings published in the IEEE Xplore.
The preferred method of running a PowerPoint presentation will be through PowerPoint Viewer 2007. This should properly display any presentation created using PowerPoint version 97 or later. You need to make sure that your presentation contains all of the fonts and any auxiliary or multimedia files needed, and that these files will be in the right place on the projection machine. The best way to do this is to through the use of the PowerPoint's “Pack and Go” (PowerPoint 2000) or “Package for CD” (PowerPoint 2003 and later) capability (hereinafter called the “package capability”). This is available in PowerPoint 2000 under File...Pack and Go, or in later versions under File...Package for CD. For a tutorial on using “Package for CD,” see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/828504. Note that “Package for CD” can also be used to create a “package” file, which can then be copied onto a flash memory stick. One of the advantages of the package capability is that you can include all the fonts used by your presentation. This avoids the problem of a font that is used in your presentation not being present on the display computer. It is strongly suggested that you take your “packaged” presentation to another computer, and practice unpacking it and showing the presentation, just to make sure that the “packaged” presentation contains everything you need, and that you are familiar with the process. You should also make sure that any and all graphics, multimedia, or other files used by your presentation are included with your presentation (another reason for using the package capability, and for trying your presentation on a computer other than the one on which it was created). Once you get to the Symposium, you are strongly urged to use the computer in the speaker preparation room to check your presentation. Even if you do not have any multimedia effects or use auxiliary files, font incompatibilities, different resolutions for the projector, and differences in standard formats used around the world very commonly cause problems. You will not be given extra time during your presentation to solve such problems.
Presentations can be loaded onto the computers in the session rooms via either CD-ROM or USB flash memory stick. It is requested that you do not use a U3-enabled flash memory stick (for example, most recent SanDisk brand memory sticks are U3 enabled). In creating a CD-ROM for your presentation, please do so in a manner such that no special software is required to read the CD-ROM. For example, some popular CD-R software provides an option of creating a “data CD” or using “DirectCD.” Create a data CD; do not use “DirectCD.” Using the latter can lead to reading compatibility problems in some cases. Also, please be sure that your software is set to close the session when you finish recording the CD. Only CD-R drives (but not “regular” CD-ROM drives) can read CDs recorded with the session left open. It is strongly urged that you try reading the CD you have created on another computer (with a standard CD-ROM drive), in order to maximize the likelihood that the CD can be read by the presentation computers. Again, please test your method of loading the presentation in speaker preparation room well before your session begins.
When generating an Adobe pdf file with your presentation, please make sure that you embed all fonts. The normal TrueType or OpenType fonts installed with Windows XP and Office 2007 should be available on the projection computers. However, Adobe Type 1 fonts will probably not be available, and therefore must be embedded if used. The use of Adobe Type 3 fonts (common in some installations of LaTex, for example) is strongly discouraged: such fonts do not scale well, and tend to produce very poor results when projected.
The session chair(s) for your session will have a Feedback Form where they will mark whether or not your paper was presented during the session. If the Form indicates that the paper was not presented, it will be automatically withdrawn from appearing in IEEE Xplore. Thus, during your session, please approach the session chair and make sure that he/she has marked your presence.
As a last comment, please try to minimize any potential problems by taking advantage of redundancy whenever possible: save and bring your presentation in multiple formats (e.g., Microsoft PowerPoint and Adobe pdf) , store your presentation in more than one media (e.g., a CD and a flash memory stick, etc.), and hand carry your presentation during travel.