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ICER 2020
Sat 8 - Thu 13 August 2020
ICER 2020 (series) /

Presenting

Because of our virtual conference format, research paper presentations are going to work differently than you might expect. This page will guide you through the key requirements.

Inclusion

Our goal in ICER presentations is to be as inclusive as possible to all attendees, independent of their abilities, their mastery of English, or their access to hardware. We hope that this goes some way towards addressing past marginalization, and that we will continue to improve for ICERs.

Paper Presentation Requirements

This year’s ICER will centralizing all videos in a YouTube channel, making it easier for attendees to browse videos, but also for other members of the community to access and discover ICER 2020 content after the conference. When you upload, you’ll be asked to indicate that you accept YouTube’s Standard License. This allows us to upload your video on your behalf.

All presentations must:

  • Be recorded. This avoids bandwidth problems, allows non-native English speakers to rewind, allows everyone to play at different speeds, and allows attendees in inconvenient time zones to stream later.
  • Be no more than 12-minutes long (or shorter, if you’re a lightning track presenter). This allows time for discussion, reduces video chat fatigue, and also increases the likelihood others will watch it online.
  • Be in 1080p format (1920×1080 with a 16:9 aspect ratio). This resolution ensures that any small text that might appear is still legible to any visually impaired viewers, or viewers who are particularly curious about a tiny detail on a slide.
  • Be less than 1 GB in size.
  • Read critical textual content. This does not mean reading everything on your slide, but everything that you want attendees to notice, ensuring that blind attendees get the same information that sighted attendees get.
  • Describe critical visual content presented. This also ensures that blind attendees get the same information that sighted attendees get.
  • Don’t rely on color to communicate information. There are numerous kinds of colorblindness, and the diversity is such that color is not a reliably accessible signal. Consider alternatives such as contrast differences, pattern differences, or labels.
  • Be captioned. You can caption the video yourself, include a caption file in one of YouTube’s supported caption formats, or you may tell us that you’d prefer YouTube’s automatically generated captions. If you choose this last option, remember that captioning will be imperfect. We will send you your video’s automatically generated captions by 28 July 2002 AoE, and give you an opportunity to send corrections by 31 July 2020 AoE.

When your presentation is ready, upload it to this Google Form by 24 July, 2020 AoE. Note, because this form involves a file upload, you’ll need to log in with a Google account before you can access it. If you don’t have a Google account and don’t want one, contact the senior site chair, Adon Moskal, for alternate arrangements to transit your file and metadata.

Presenting Papers at the Conference

Because everything is recorded, you might wonder how the recordings will be used during the synchronous portion of the conference. There will be two formats:

  • Single-track presentations will include all attendees on a Zoom Webinar, with Q&A via Zoom. Attendees will be free to post questions and chat about the talk Discord > Talk Discussion > #plenary-discussion; chat will not be available in Zoom, but Q&A will. Your job as a presenter is to answer questions as they’re posted in Zoom. After your pre-recorded talk is over, the session chair will moderate questions and ask you them until time is up.
  • Parallel-track presentations will include five tables of up to 12 attendees, streaming your talk independently and then discussing it for up to 25 minutes. You should monitor for questions in the Discord > Talk Discussion channel corresponding to your talk, and rotate between the five tables to say hi and contribute to discussions. We recommend starting in one room, finishing the presentation, answering a few questions, then rotating. If you have multiple co-authors attending, distribute yourselves amongst the five tables.

Because videos will be pre-recorded, both types of sessions will be less like performances and more like a viewing party, like might happen at a short film festival, a movie premier, or the launch of a new product. In both types of tracks, we will gather together as a group, the session chair will stream the pre-recorded video (or you can watch it independently on the ICER YouTube channel). While the audience watches, everyone can post thoughts and questions about the presentations in Zoom or Discord, which will be the basis for Q&A and discussion. Because presenters do not need to perform, they can also answer questions throughout the presentation. Comments on YouTube will be disabled.

For details on how the session chair will run the sessions, read the session chair guidelines.

Paper Presentation Recommendations

Think about how to construct a video that people will want to stream and watch together with fellow attendees.

First, because 12 minutes is so short, be very mindful that you cannot present every detail of your paper. You may need to skip many details about your method or elide some of the key results. Think of the presentation as a compelling summary of your work that helps everyone learn the gist of your discovery, while convincing more interested readers to spend 30-40 minutes reading your paper.

Because pre-recorded videos are a different medium than an in-person talk, reconsider which conventions to follow. For example, most in-person presentations involve a person talking, gesturing, and pointing to static content on a slide. While that can work well in person, that doesn’t translate well to video. Video, on the other hand, also enables other media, such as animation, music, and sound to convey ideas. Think carefully about how to engage the audience, and recognize that the more you surprise them with your choices, the more likely they are to pay attention. Some surprising choices might include:

If you’ve always wanted an opportunity to explore beyond the conventional PowerPoint presentation with voice over, consider this an occasion and encouragement to do so. While PowerPoint might be the most familiar, the recorded nature of the videos opens up other possibilities for tools. Apple’s Keynote presentation software is particularly good at creating more dynamic, animated presentations with rich media. Movie creation software like iMovie and Windows Movie Maker allow you to incorporate music, overlays, and transitions.

Lightning Talks at the Conference

For anyone who was accepted into the Lightning Track, a single PowerPoint slide to support your lightning talk must be provided by the 30 July 2020 (AoE). (This doesn’t include the doctoral consortium participants, who will just pitch verbally).

The slide must conform to the formatting details provided below to enable the preparation of a single slide deck for the session. During the lightning talks the slide deck will be shared by the session chair. Your talk will be strictly timed and must be 2 to 3 minutes long. Your slide will be shown for a maximum of 3 minutes, or until the end of your talk if you finish sooner.

PowerPoint slide format:

  • Use this PowerPoint template.
  • Please do not change the slide size, presentation theme, slide master, or other layout options. Everything you do must apply only to your one slide.
  • All images must be embedded.
  • Please do not include video or audio.
  • Please ensure any content such as graphs from Excel do not link to the original file: objects like graphs should be embedded as images.
  • Your PowerPoint slide must be saved as a .pptx presentation.

When your PowerPoint slide is ready, please email it to the ICER poster and lightning talk co-chair jwhalley@aut.ac.nz by 30 July, 2020 AoE.

Lightning talks will be presented using Zoom, in person, and live during the lightning talk session. Presenters are required to check-in with the session chairs 10 minutes before the session starts.

Poster Presentations

Accepted poster authors are required to supply their poster or a poster presentation by the 30 July 2020 AoE. Your content will be linked on the conference website for people to view outside of the poster session.

Remember that the aim of your poster is to provide a snapshot of your work in-order to encourage colleagues to engage in a dialog about the work during your live poster discussion session. We provide a few presentation suggestions below:

  • A video of you explaining your work with your poster (either physical or digital) in the background. This is the closest to you presenting in person, or
  • A video of your poster with audio voice-over (i.e. showing only your poster, not yourself), or
  • A PDF version of your poster.

If you choose to submit a presentation using video your submission must be no more than 3 minutes long and be less than 1 GB in size and be in MP4 format.

When your presentation is ready, upload it to the ICER Presentation Submission Form by 30 July, 2020 AoE. Note, because this form involves a file upload, you’ll need to log in with a Google account before you can access it. If you don’t have a Google account and don’t want one, contact the senior site chair, Adon Moskal adon.moskal@op.ac.nz, for alternate arrangements to transit your file and metadata.

To present at the conference, each poster presenter has been allocated a Discord channel. You are required to be present in your Discord channel during the time of the poster presentation session. You may find it useful to screen share your poster during the poster session, as appropriate, to facilitate discussion with conference attendees.