Each room will be equipped with the following audio-visual equipment:

• LCD Projector
• Computer
• 
Laser Pointer

PRESENTATIONS

All speakers should present to the Speaker Ready Room (Marriott, room 405) to upload their slides prior to their presentation time. A staff person there will help speakers upload their slides and other files. If at all possible, please upload your slides the day before your presentation. The Speaker Ready Room will be open on Wednesday from 3pm to 7pm and on Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 7am to 3:15pm.

If speakers do not upload their slides ahead of time, they can still load them onto the computer before they present. If there are problems loading the presentation just before presenting, however, they run the risk of using up their presentation time. 

Computers in each presentation room will run in Microsoft Windows with Power Point. Speakers wishing to use their own Macintosh laptop must supply their own Mac/PC connector that allows connection of the video cable from the projector to the laptop. 

Please get to the room in which you will be presenting about 10 minutes before your session begins, so that you can check that your slides are properly loaded. Please bring a copy of your slides on a USB drive in case there is any problem.

For regular Oral presentation sessions, presentations should last 12 minutes. 

After your 12 minute presentation, there will then be 3 minutes allotted to questions from the moderators and audience and answers from presenters.

During that 3-minute period, the next speaker will come to the podium and make sure that his or her slides are loaded and ready for the next presentation.

For Invited Educational Symposium sessions, your organizer will have arranged the time allotted to each of you and will help you stick to the schedule.

Presenters are asked to prepare their talks to match the allocated times, which will be rigidly enforced by session chairs.  


Below, we provide a number of well-tested suggestions that may improve the quality of your presentations.

1. Use as many summary slides and as few original data slides as possible.
2. In your summary slides, use drawings and schematics as much as possible and avoid long lists of text.  Please use a very large font size (at least 18 point).
3. Be very careful in your choice of color for slides.  Black and white still works well, yellow or white on a dark blue background works well, but red on blue or blue on red don’t work at all.  Things that look good on a computer screen don’t necessarily look good when projected in a large meeting room. Make sure you project all your slides before you actually use them in your talk.
4. DON’T just read a list of things that you have put on a slide.  It’s much better, if you have to and want to go through a list, to use just single word titles on your slide, and elaborate on them verbally. 
5. Keep all slides as simple as possible.  Sample data are much better than all your data.  People will believe, for example, that you know how to administer a comprehensive language assessment or run an electrophoretic gel if you show them just one example, rather than 10 different, detailed samples.
6. Don’t fill every second of your presentation with slides.  Reduce the number as much as possible. A good rule of thumb is to have no more than one slide per minute.