Instructions for Lecture & Poster Presentation

Lecture Presentation

These presentation instructions are applicable for all oral sessions in ACL-IJCNLP Main Conference, Workshops/Co-located Events, Tutorials, and EMNLP.

Equipments

Each presentation room is equipped with a laptop computer, a data projector, a microphone (for large rooms), a lectern, and a pointing device, you are strongly recommended to use the laptops provided by the conference. Identical laptops with the same specifications are also available in the Speaker Ready Room (MR204, Level 2, Suntec). You can check if your slides can be displayed properly in the Speaker Ready Room.
 
The laptops are equipped with:
· Window XP sp3
· WirelessLAN connection, USB port, DVD player
· Office 2003
· Adobe Reader, Flash Player, Media Player (Microsoft/ Real/ QuickTime)
· Anti-virus software

You are advised to check if your PowerPoint slides can be displayed properly using PowerPoint Viewer 2003. The free software is available at Microsoft website.

WiFi is available at the conference venue. However, the bandwidth is only enough for web browsing and email, not for video/audio streaming.

Presentation

Please notify the session chair of your presence and upload your slides to the laptop in your presentation room at least 15 minutes before the start of the session. As some short paper oral sessions including 4DII and 6E-H are connected to the previous sessions, the presenters need to get ready even before the previous sessions start. 20 minute talk plus 5 minute question answering are allocated for each main conference full paper and EMNLP oral presentation paper, while 12 plus 3 minutes are given per main conference short oral presentation paper. The allocated presentation time for workshops/co-located events and tutorials may differ. Please check the conference web site for the exact time allocation for your presentation.

Please rehearse your presentation and ensure it falls within the time limit. Make sure each of your key points is easy to explain with aid of the material on your slides. Do not read directly from the slide during your presentation. You shouldn't need to prepare a written speech, although it is often a good idea to prepare the opening and closing sentences in advance.

Venue & Timetable

All technical sessions are held in Suntec Convention Centre. You may check the assigned presentation room and the session timetable at the conference web site for updates.

Poster Presentation

These presentation instructions are applicable for posters in ACL-IJCNLP Main Conference Short Paper Posters, Software Demonstrations, EMNLP Poster-cum-Reception, and Student Research Workshop (A0 posters) and in ACL-IJCNLP Workshops, Collocated events (A1 posters).

A paper presented as a poster offers a unique opportunity to present a research work in a way customized to individual or a small group of people. It is more interactive than an oral presentation. Therefore, the work can be presented, from certain aspects, more effectively to a small but well-targeted audience. Remember people attracted by a poster are so interested in the work that they are willing to invest anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes of their time. That is a big chunk out of what they have for a poster session!

To attract the audience who would be interested in your work, the poster should have a title in large font which is highly visible to even passers-by. Its contents also need fonts large enough to be readable from 1 to 2 meters away. Highlight the pages of your paper in the proceedings so people can locate it easily. As to its layout, it may not be a good idea to simply create a few slides and patch them together like an enlarged handout of an oral presentation. Instead, a poster allows you to arrange things anywhere you want. For example, the system diagram can be in the center, surrounded by descriptions and performance tables of its individual components. So take advantage of this flexibility.

"A picture is worth a thousand words". Try to choose visual aids like figures, diagrams, cartoons, colors, even lines over texts on your poster to show the research idea and the logic flow of the contents. Thus after attracting people with a nice title, the poster can be self-explaining so that people can understand it and quickly find out whether they have more questions to ask. If they do, they will have a small discussion with you to get the most out of your poster presentation. In addition, some people are more verbal than visual. They prefer to listen instead of to read even the visualization is great. So, prepare "mini-talks" as short as 30 seconds, and some as long as 5 minutes. Kindly ask the people (who might be reading the poster apparently slowly) whether they would like a brief introduction from you. Similar as delivering an oral presentation, bear your audience's background in mind. Seasoned researchers probably need only a few key points while more general information would help those not so familiar with your task. If you find it will otherwise take long to talk with a highly interested person, try to wrap up politely so you can talk to other people who is waiting.

Occasionally, people prepare some print-outs to complement their posters. If you expect such print-outs to be helpful, by all means prepare them.

For posters in ACL-IJCNLP Main Conference, Short Paper Posters, Software Demonstrations, EMNLP Poster-cum-Reception, and Student Research Workshop, we will provide display easels measuring 100cm in width and 200cm in height, with a usable board area of 95cm X 190cm. This size is good for a standard A0 poster in the portrait orientation. The poster easels are double-sided with one poster on each side. Mounting items such as push tacks or Blu-Tack adhesive will be provided. However, no tables will be available except for Software Demonstrations.

For posters in ACL-IJCNLP 2009 Workshops, Collocated events, we will provide display easels in the workshop rooms that are only good for standard A1 posters in the portrait orientation.

The respective poster sessions scheduled will be announced in the conference website and conference handbook. You surely will be attending other posters. To avoid leaving your poster without a presenter (in such case it will attracts less people than it deserves), try to have your co-author or colleague cover you if possible.

The layout of conference for poster sessions(PDF file).