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This information provides
general guidelines for presenting at CMI events.
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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
“Upcoming Events” section. Look for the link to your event.
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Workshop description, date, location. An agenda will
be posted close to the date of the event.
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Hotel information. We usually arrange conference
rates at select hotels. You need to make your own booking,
and pay for the room yourself.
What do you
need to do before the conference?
Once you’ve been accepted as
a speaker, please send:
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
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.
Who else is
speaking and what are their topics?
Check for a speaker list on
our web site or, if nothing is posted yet, contact the CMI office for a
draft list of speakers.
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 usually 15 or 20 minutes (varies with the event). The time shown on the conference
agenda is usually 5-10 minutes longer, but this includes the time needed to
introduce you and for a short question period afterwards. The time
allotments will be confirmed for each event.
Audio-visual
& 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. If you need specialized software, or have a movie
embedded in your presentation, please contact our office.
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 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 use the conference computer.
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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 CDs on the computer ahead of time, and we will
test to make sure your presentation works.
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Better yet, if your presentation is less than 10 MB
in size, email it to office@cmiae.org
before the conference.
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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 male speakers at our events wear a sports jacket and casual
pants, and women usually wear casual pants with a jacket, or occasionally a
skirt. (Not jeans.) 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
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Only a small amount of text per slide
please; your voice should carry the show, not the words on the screen.
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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.
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Use only one image per slide. Collages are
pleasantly
“arty” but the pictures are too small. If the picture is worth seeing we
want to see it full-sized.
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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.
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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.
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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 by 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.
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THE VERY BEST TIP
FOR A SHOW THAT LOOKS GREAT
When you've finished making 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.
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Suggestions
to make your talk more interesting
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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.
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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.
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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.
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