Columbia Mountains Institute of Applied Ecology

Information for Presenters

You gotta click this: Three best tips for a great show

Your contact person for questions is:

Jackie Morris, CMI Executive Director
office@cmiae.org or 250-837-9311 (Revelstoke)

The following information is available on our web site in the “Events” section.

• Workshop description, date, location. An agenda will be posted close to the date of the event.
• Venue information
• A block of rooms has been set aside at local hotels. You need to make your own booking, and pay for the room yourself.

What do you need to do before the conference?

Please send:
(Due dates will be provided for each event)

• A short “bio” that we can read out loud to introduce you (click here for details).
• A text summary of your talk (click here for details) (not PowerPoint slides). This is for our Proceedings.
• Let us know if there are limitations about when you can be at the event, so we can plan the agenda accordingly.

Who are you speaking to?

Our events attract a multidisciplinary group of researchers, resource managers, resource industry staff, consultants, academics, protected areas staff, First Nations, public interest groups, and grad students. This is a well educated group with most people having one or more university degrees. However they may not be experts in your field.

• Avoid using acronyms.
• Avoid jargon that is highly specific to your field of interest.

Who else is speaking and what are their topics?

Check for a speaker list on our web site, and watch for updates. If you want more detail, i.e. to avoid overlap with another speaker, contact the CMI office office@cmiae.org 250-837-9311.

Do you need a letter inviting you to speak?

To smooth the way with section heads and your financial people, you may require a letter inviting you to speak at our conference. We’d be happy to send you a letter!

Time allotment for your presentation

The time allotted for your presentation is 20 minutes (unless we have made other arrangements with you). The time shown on the conference agenda is usually half an hour; but this includes the time needed to introduce you and for a short question period afterwards.

Audio-visual and computer support

We assume you will bring your presentation in PowerPoint format, Windows platform, on a memory stick or CD. We are running PowerPoint 2007. If you are working with a Macintosh, please test your presentation on a PC before you come. If in doubt, convert your presentation to pages of a PDF file - this always works! You can go through it page-by-page but with no special effects.

If you need specialized software, have a movie embedded in your presentation, or need to play a sound file, please contact our office so we can be sure the conference laptop has the correct software.

We have a digital projector, screen, laptop computer, and a microphone set up for each event. If you need other audio visual support, such as sound speakers or an overhead transparency projector, please specify. You can of course bring your own computer as a backup if you wish, but you are expected to run your presentation from the conference computer.

As soon as you arrive at the workshop, please find Jackie Morris or the volunteer who is at the computer and give her your CD. We like to load the presentations on the computer ahead of time, and we will test to make sure your presentation works.

Better yet, if your presentation is less than 10 MB in size, email it to office@cmiae.org before the conference.

You may wish to bring overhead transparencies as a backup—we haven’t ever had our technology crash, but there has to be a first time!

Handouts and/or posters

Handouts and posters are welcome. Posters are an excellent way to supplement the information in your talk—you can include graphs and extra information that you didn’t have time to cover. Please contact the CMI office to let us know if you are bringing a poster, table top display, or free standing display. If you want to provide a handout for everyone, call CMI to find out how many copies you should bring along. Or, bring just a few "table copies" so people can see what the handout is like, and provide a sign-up sheet for sending out a digital copy.

What to wear

Most of our presenters dress up a little bit, maybe one or two "levels" above jeans. Usually male speakers at our events wear a sports jacket and casual pants, and women usually wear casual pants with a blouse or jacket, or occasionally a skirt. Rarely do we see a neck tie or high heels. Your audience will be wearing jeans, fleece vests, and the kind of clothes you'd find at Mountain Equipment Co-op.

Standards for your PowerPoint slides

• Only a small amount of text per slide please, in a big font size. Your voice should carry the show, not the words on the screen.
• If you use charts or graphs as part of your presentation, KEEP THEM BIG AND SIMPLE and explain them well. It is hard to see those small numbers from the back of the room, and it is hard to absorb all the information if you are flashing through several illustrations. Consider bringing along a poster to supplement your talk and use it to display your figures, graphs, and tables in full detail.
• Use only one photograph per slide. Collages are pleasantly “arty” but the pictures are too small for a conference setting. If the picture is worth seeing we'd sure like to see them full-sized.
• Use high contrast colours so the text stands out from the background when the slide is projected. We usually leave a few lights on in the conference room. Text overtop of a photograph is hard to read.
• Consider saving your PowerPoint presentation as a “.pps” format, i.e. as a “PowerPoint Show” format. Your file will open with the first slide on the screen. Saving in this format also makes a smaller file size, and stops unintentional editing of your show.
• Keep your photograph file sizes as small as possible. With today's high resolution cameras and scans, it's easy to have your show bog down with unnecessarily huge file sizes. Take a few moments to re-size and re-sample your images before you insert them in a PowerPoint. The rule of thumb is that they need to be no larger than your computer screen can display them, i.e. when viewed at 100%, the entire image should fit on your screen. If the photo looks okay on your monitor, it will be okay when projected in your show.

Suggestions to make your talk more interesting

• Bring your personal experience into your subject. Consider including anecdotal experiences from your field work to make a point, or include pictures of you doing your project.
• Unless the point of your talk is to explain a new methodology, the audience will be most interested in your results and your interpretation of what the results mean for better environmental management. Spend most of your time discussing results.
• Consider including a map to locate your project. Participants will be from all over western Canada and won’t know your local geography. A couple of screen shots captured from Google Earth or Google Maps can be very effective.

The three very best tips for a great show   When you've finished drafting your presentation, put your presentation up on your computer monitor with the room lights on, and back away 3-4 steps. This is what your show will look like to people at the back of the conference room. Watch the entire show and revise any slides that you can’t see properly. Your voice should carry the show, not the text on the screen. Rehearse.