Instructions for oral presentations at Coling 2008

See below for Posters and Demos.

For the main conference sessions, the 30-minute time slot is divided into three parts: 20 minutes for the presentation, 8 minutes for discussion and 2 minutes for moving between rooms.

The following equipment will be available in each presentation room:

In each room, there will be one student volunteer to help with any problems. A technician will be available to look after the A/V equipment.

Specifications of the software installed on the computer:

Please make sure that your presentation works flawlessly with the specified software. If you need any other software or hardware (e.g. speakers), please contact the local organizers immediately, i.e. before you come to Manchester.

Transferring presentations onto the computer

Each presentation in an electronic form should be transferred onto the computer in the presentation room before the session begins. The session chairperson and the student helper will be available in the room in which the presentation will take place 30 minutes before the session (i.e. 30 minutes before the morning/afternoon programme start, or at the beginning of the break preceding the particular session). Presenters must set up their presentations before the session starts, and you should not expect to have time to do this at the start of your talk. Appropriate data-storage media for tranfer to the computer are the following:

In exceptional circumstances, it may be preferable for speakers to use their own computers. If you want to do this, it is your responsibility to practice attaching the data projector connection and making sure that the screen display and data display are both satisfactory. You must also make sure that there are no complications when the data projector is reconnected to the main computer. Again, this must be done before the session starts.

Posters

Poster boards will accommodate posters up to A0 size (portrait orientation) (i.e. approximately 84cm x 119cm or 33in × 47in). Drawing pins and velcro strips will be available. The posters should be easily readable at a distance of about 2 meters. No additional facilities (such as electrical sockets, tables for laptops or handouts etc.) can be guaranteed to the poster presenters.

There are four poster sessions (each day except Wednesday, from 14.00 to 15.30). Poster presentations can be put up on any available poster board in the poster area (the area by the entrance to Theatre B on Floor 1) any time from the morning break on the day of the poster session to which you have been assigned, and can be left in place until the end of the day. Any posters left on the boards will be removed the following morning and may be disposed of.

Demos

Each demo will have the normal set-up, i.e. you will each have your own space (including a table and several chairs, power supply, and a poster board), but you must supply your own computer hardware. In addition, each demo will have a 10 minute slot to give a presentation with a data projector. There will be poster boards in case you want to bring posters describing what your demo is about. They are standard size boards large enough for an A0 poster (see above): just bring enough material so people will know what you're demo-ing and hence be able to decide whether they want to know more. The room does have wireless internet access, so people whose demos rely on internet access will be OK.

The order of presentations will follow the order in which demos are listed on the Programme page.

You can either view the presentation as an 'advert' for the demo or use it to show your system doing some of its tricks to tempt people to come and see more. Please remember that people coming to the Demo session will be expecting to see working systems doing something interesting, and they will not be expecting research presentations. The presentation slot is there to whet the audience's appetite for the demo, not to present research outcomes.