GUIDANCE FOR PRESENTERS

Oral presentations are each allotted 12 minutes: 9 minutes for your presentation, two minutes for questions and one minute for transition. All pre-recorded oral presentations (virtual presentation upload as well) may not exceed 9 minutes.

Speed talks are each allotted 5 minutes: 4 minutes for your presentation during which you may present key-ideas, results and their meaning/implication, followed by one minute for transition. All pre-recorded speed talk presentations (virtual presentation uploads as well) may not exceed 4 minutes. Three slides should be sufficient to allow you to get your point across during this style of presentation but it is at your own discretion to decide how many slides you want to use.

Keep in mind that the sessions chairs will be very strict about the time limits; do not force them to cut abruptly your presentation, respect your time limits as well as the rest of colleagues presenting their work. All pre-recorded presentations will be reviewed by our Scientific Program Committee for quality assurance. 

The required format for both orals and speed talks is PowerPoint (PPT or PPTX), Wide screen definition, 16:9 ratio.

In order to facilitate the presentations flow and keep the program on time, presenters will not be able to use their own computers during their presentations.

Please embed any videos or audio within the presentation. Include ALL videos and/or audio files in a separate folder on your thumb drive. This will enable us to correct any problems on-site.

Try to use a standard font as the machines utilized will typically only have the standard font files on hand.

Presenters will need to bring their presentations on a thumb drive to the speaker upload room at the convention center. More information will be released in July 2022.

If there are technical issues, an A/V technician will be available onsite to assist you.

The Speaker Ready Room is a designated room where speakers can go to practice their presentation.  There will be a sign-up sheet on the door (room location TBD) to sign out a time slot for private use.  Available in the room will be an LCD projector and screen, please bring your own computer.

In person presentations will be presented live in West Palm Beach, Florida. These sessions will not be live-streamed; however, all pre-recorded presentations will be made available at the start of each respective session for virtual and in person attendees. In addition, a virtual Q & A session with the presenters will be streamed for the virtual audience during scheduled times following the completion of each live session.

At the start of each scheduled virtual session, ALL presentations in that particular session are made available online. Presenters in that session are required to be online in “Office Hours” for the first hour of session to answer questions and interact with attendees.

Video presentations are each allotted 5 minutes: 4 minutes for your presentation, followed by one minute for transition. All pre-recorded video presentations (virtual presentation uploads as well) may not exceed 4 minutes.

Presenting your work as a video requires creative talent and moving beyond familiar presentation formats and techniques to communicate your message. At first, it may appear a daunting task, but the benefits will be worth the effort. First, video presentations allow one to express their creative talent, an opportunity that is not always evident in research, and provides a bridge between science and art. Second, they present opportunities for marine mammal research to reach a wider audience through social media and other avenues not accessible with conventional oral or poster presentations and thus useful outreach tools. Third, presentations with footage of marine mammals underwater provide a greater understanding and appreciation of how these remarkable animals live in the marine environment and may contribute toward developing new research ideas.

Authors that select video as their choice of presentation should submit an abstract as one would for the other presentation formats. The abstract will be reviewed and if judged to be of sufficient quality, the authors will be invited to create and submit a video of their research. To ensure a high level of quality in video presentations suitable for viewing at a scientific conference, all video submissions will be reviewed, scored and a decision made on their quality prior to the start of the conference.

Each submission will be reviewed and scored by three reviewers who have experience in creating and editing video. Obviously, the video review process cannot be conducted blind but will strictly adhere to the scoring rubric provided below. After adjusting for differences in scoring among individual reviewers, videos will be ranked on the basis of their overall score.

Presenters will have an opportunity to update your video submission after the review deadline mentioned above. Shortly after we will review all submissions and return comments/suggestions to each presenter by May 18, 2022. This deadline is for the video presentation review committee to to review and provide comment on your video to ensure quality of submissions.

To be successful, submissions must achieve a 65% score or above in Section A and in Section B and score higher than ‘Insufficient’ in all categories. Video submissions that fail to achieve the score will be assigned a speed or poster talk. It is strongly recommended that video presenters follow the scoring rubric when creating their video. Submissions should be no more than 4 minutes in duration; videos of longer duration will not be accepted. Presenters are encouraged to use all forms of media (i.e., video, animation, narration, etc) to creatively express a structured storyline of their research including its purpose, the results and their meaning and implication.Footage and sound legitimately purchased may be used in the video. Primary authors are encouraged to present the work and provide the narration to create a link between the research and the researcher. The content should be presented in a manner that can be understood and appreciated not only by scientific peers but also by a wider audience.

Review the SCORING CRITERIA for video presentations before submitting your video to ensure that you have covered all scoring elements.

In person video presentations will be shown shown live in West Palm Beach, Florida. These sessions will not be live-streamed; however, all pre-recorded presentations will be made available at the start of each respective session for virtual and in person attendees. In addition, a virtual Q & A session with the presenters will be streamed for the virtual audience during scheduled times following the completion of each live session.

At the start of each scheduled virtual session, ALL presentations in that particular session are made available online. Presenters in that session are required to be online in “Office Hours” for the first hour of session to answer questions and interact with attendees.

The title of your poster and the names of the authors should be large and clearly visible from 20 feet away. This means that the font should be at least 1 inch (2.54 cm, 72-point font size) in height. Affiliations and contact details (including e-mail addresses) of authors should be included.

Any text should be kept to a bare minimum, keeping in mind that the main points of your poster should be contained in the figures and illustrations and their captions. The text should be in at least 24-point font size to be easily read.

Poster size for SMM2022 will be 90×90 cm. Please do not exceed this poster size, as there will be NO room for larger posters!

Posters can be produced by using design or presentation software such as Microsoft PowerPoint. The entire poster can be laid out as a single file, including text, tables, figures and photographs.

The poster can then be printed using large color ink-jet printers at printing service centers. These panels only allow double sided tape to stick the poster to the board. It is the poster owner’s responsibility to check that the poster can stick to the board using this kind of material. Note that Posters printed on some kind of fabric or plastic may not hold with the tape supplied by the conference and that tape that cannot easily come off the board is not allowed.

ALL POSTERS (both in person and virtual poster presentations) will be displayed on the conference platform in a gallery view with search features by keyword, topic category, and presentation.  Each poster has a dedicated page that includes all the materials submitted – (e.g. a technical paper, 3-minute poster video, and poster PDF, etc.). There will be dedicated times where people are encouraged to go visit virtual posters and gamification components that will reward participants to actively engage in the virtual forum.

Please note that virtual poster submissions (those assigned and accepted as virtual) will not be printed and displayed at the in person conference.

Other features include:

• A text chat function that allows people to pose questions that you can respond to at your leisure. You will be alerted any time an attendee has added anything to the chat so you can respond promptly.
• Set your office hours, to be live in the chat session and engage directly with visitors.  You can also set up live discussions for anyone interested in engaging with you.