Presentation Guidelines for Speakers
Overview
This year’s 4th annual Fermi Symposium features 100 presentations and 200 posters.
- Presentations will be delivered in the Regency Main Ballroom on the second floor of the Monterey Hyatt Regency, and during parallel sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday, in the Big Sur Conference Room on the first floor.
- Poster sessions will occupy Rooms IV, V and VI adjacent to the main ballroom on the second floor. The first poster session will be Sunday - Tuesday. The second session will be Wednesday and Thursday.
- During each presentation session, the presentation room will have a session chairperson who will introduce and moderate the presentations.
- The room will also have a presentation facilitator who will load presentation files onto the computer, monitor the presentation hardware, and help with any technical issues that may arise.
- Presenters will control the flow of their own presentations using a wireless controller and laser pointer.
- Timing lights will be used to indicate when presentations are approaching their allotted time.
Symposium Computer Hardware
Each presentation room will be equipped with the following equipment:
- MacBook Air Laptop Computer
- USB 3 / USB 2 port for plugging in flash memory sticks or external hard drives
- WiFi Internet connectivity
- Video projector with audio
- Wireless presentation controller and laser pointer
Note: MacBook Air computers have no CD/DVD drives. Please bring your presentation files on a flash memory stick or on a USB 2 or USB 3 compatible external hard drive.
Symposium Computer Software
The MacBook Air laptops, running Mac OS X 10.7 or 10.8 will have the following application software installed:
- Microsoft Office 2011, including PowerPoint (.ppt and .pptx files), Word and Excel
- Apple Keynote 09 (Apple’s presentation software)
- Adobe Acrobat Reader for viewing PDF files
- Apple QuickTime 10 for playing QuickTime video files (.mov, .mp4 and .m4v) and audio files
- Telestream Flip4Mac for playing Windows Media files (.wmv, .avi, .mpg, etc.)
Notes about Playing Windows PowerPoint Presentations on a Mac
In general, the Mac 2011 version of Microsoft PowerPoint can display .ppt or .pptx files created on computers running PowerPoint in either the Mac or Windows operating systems—with some caveats:
- If you are creating a PowerPoint presentation on a Windows computer, use Microsoft fonts such as Arial, Times New Roman, and so on that are available on both platforms.
- PowerPoint presentations created on a Windows computer that use Greek letters, certain symbols and equations can exhibit display issues when played on a Mac computer. When in doubt, save graphs, charts and equations as image files (JPEG or PNG) and embed the image files in the presentation, rather than creating the equation text in PowerPoint or the Microsoft Office Equation module.
- If your presentation plays any audio, video or other media files, these files must be included along with the .ppt or .pptx file in the same folder. Also, when you build your presentation, media files must be imported into the presentation from the presentation folder location—not from some other folder on your hard drive.
- Important: The Mac version of PowerPoint cannot directly play Windows video or media files—that is, files with .wmv, .wma or .avi file extensions.
If your presentation was created on a Windows computer and if it includes video or audio Windows media files, these files will need to be converted to Apple’s QuickTime format and re-linked into the presentation in order for them to play on a MacBook Air computer during your presentation.
Note: If necessary, we can help you with cross-platform font and media file incompatibility issues on-site at the symposium.
However, given the logistics of managing 100 presentations, we would greatly appreciate your making an effort to prepare Windows PowerPoint presentations for playback on a Mac prior to arriving at the symposium.
Fermi Symposium Presentations Coordinator and Facilitators
Bob Kahn
Communications & Media Specialist
Fermi Symposium — Stanford Local Organizing Committee
Email: rakahn@stanford.edu
Cell Phone: 650-533-9933
Bob Kahn, a member of the Local Fermi Symposium Organizing Committee at Stanford has agreed to serve as the Presentations Coordinator for the symposium. Bob will also serve as the Presentations Facilitator in the Regency Ballroom during the symposium. If you have questions regarding your presentation, please contact Bob by email or phone anytime prior to or during the symposium.
Tom Langenstein, Chairman of the Stanford Local Organizing Committee, will serve as the Presentation Facilitator in the Big Sur Conference Room.
- Bob will be available in the Regency Ballroom during registration from 4:00 - 7:00 pm on Sunday, October 28th to help presenters who have questions or issues with presentation files.
- During the symposium week, Bob will be in the Regency Ballroom starting at 7:30 am each day and during each session break. Likewise, on all days with parallel sessions, Tom will be available in the Big Sur Conference Room.
Uploading Your Presentation Files Prior to Your Session
- If your presentation was created on a Mac computer, or if you know it is compatible with Mac PowerPoint 2011 or Adobe Acrobat, please bring your presentation files on a USB drive (flash memory stick, thumb drive or external drive) to your presentation session room during the break prior to your presentation session.
- If you have any concerns about playing your presentation on a MacBook Air laptop, please see Bob Kahn in the Regency Ballroom from 7:30-8:15 am on the day of your presentation or any day prior.
Windows-only Presentations
If your presentation must run on a Windows computer, please bring your own Windows laptop and your own wireless presentation controller to the symposium. At the beginning of your presentation, we will connect the video and audio output ports on your computer to the video projector and the room’s audio system.
In cases where you are providing your own equipment, you must do the following:
- Nofity Bob Kahn (contact information above) by email or phone by Friday, October 26. 2012 that you will be presenting with your own Windows laptop computer.
- Bring your laptop and presentation to the conference room where your presentation is scheduled between 7:30 and 8:00 am on the day of your presentation. The presentations facilitator in that room will hook up your laptop to the projector and ensure that your presentation will play properly.
- Return to the presentation room with your laptop during the break immediately prior to your presentation session.
