PowerPoint Tips | Presentation Tips | Reimbursement | Speaker Ready Room | Session Sponsorship

Speaker Release Form
Presenter Registration Form
Presenter Housing Form

PowerPoint Preparation Tips

• Color slides are more effective than black and white.
• Dark backgrounds are better than black on white; a yellow background and black lettering is considered the most readable.
• What looks good on your screen may not look good on LCD projectors—be prepared to adjust the color. Also, keep in mind that 10% of audience members have difficulty with reds and greens.
• Limit each slide to 15 to 20 words.
• Make sure the font is large enough: 1-in. letters are readable from 10 ft.; 2-in. letters are readable from 20 ft. 72-point fonts work well for large audience presentations. Narrow fonts (such as Times and Arial) are difficult to read from 10 ft.
• Leave space—at least the height of a capital letter—between lines.
• Use titles to supplement, not duplicate, slide data.
• Use several simple slides rather than one complicated slide.
• Use duplicates if you need to refer to the same slide at different times in your talk.

Presentation Tips

• Test your PowerPoint file in the Speaker Ready Room. Walk through the presentation and look for slides that are out of sequence or with graphics that did not load. Time yourself. Know which slides you can skip and/or remove if the presentation runs long.
• If using PowerPoint, place a shortcut of your file on the desktop to prevent searching for your file.
• Press "B" to blackout your PowerPoint presentation until you are ready to begin. Press "B" again to reveal the screen.
• Disable the laptop's screen saver to prevent "drop out" during discussions. Disable the power saver to prevent the screen from blacking out—it also prevents a slowed response when your hard drive goes into sleep mode.
• Hide the pointer (Pointer Options) if you're not going to use it during shows.
• Use your laptop as your monitor—avoid looking at the overhead screen. Stay focused on the advance.
• Arrive to the assigned room in time to verify that the appropriate AV equipment has been delivered.

Speaker Ready Room

The speaker ready room will be set up with a computer which will be networked with a PC in the rooms for seminars, special topic lectures, and platform sessions. This will allow speakers to load PowerPoint® presentations in the speaker ready room and have them distributed electronically through a computer network to the desktop of the PC in the appropriate session room. AALAS will provide Windows CPUs with CD drives, PowerPoint application, data projector, and PC laptop access to the data projector; this equipment must be requested as soon as possible to ensure availability.

Each speaker can either submit their presentation via the National Meeting 2008 Presentation Submission site, managed by our Audio Visual Group, or bring their presentation to the Speaker Ready Room in the Indianapolis Convention Center, on a CD-ROM, floppy disk, Zip disk, Compact flash card, Memory Stick, Multi-media card, SD Card, or a laptop 24 hours prior to the scheduled time of their presentation. If you submit your presentation via the website, you will save time on site waiting for your presentation to be down loaded. When checking in, you simply go to a terminal, and AV personnel will pull up your presentation for preview. The deadline to upload your presentation is November 3, 2008.

Speaker Ready Room hours:
Sunday, November 9: 1:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m.
Monday, November 10: 7:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
Tuesday, November 11: 7:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
Wednesday, November 12: 7:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
Thursday, November 13: 7:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m.

Supplies, Travel Funds, and Registration Fees

All program participants (both members and non-members) will be allowed to register for the meeting at the lower program participant fee.

If a requested budget is approved by the National Meeting Program Committee (NMPC), then presenters at the AALAS National Meeting will be eligible for registration fees and honoraria if the topic is outside the normal scope of AALAS members’ expertise or is being presented by a nonmember, is pertinent to the total meeting program, and/or the speaker cannot participate without financial support. These expenses and honoraria must be specified and requested on the program proposal submitted for consideration, and the amounts must be within the program speaker budget and approved by the NMPC. The leader and panelists will be notified if any budget was approved.

Presenters are eligible for reimbursement of expenses for round-trip travel (coach or mileage at current reimbursement rate), all or part of the meeting registration fee, and one day’s per diem. (If airfare expense may be substantially reduced by traveling on different day, thus resulting in a longer stay, the NMPC may approve additional days’ per diem.) Budgeted and submitted expenses are reimbursed following the National Meeting according to the Travel & Expense Reimbursement
Policy (T&ERP) in the AALAS Policies and Procedures Manual. The NMPC may elect to grant a set amount to subsidize expenses.

Commercial exhibitors (AALAS member or non-member) who are coordinating a session normally are not provided reimbursement of National Meeting expenses.

Please be specific when requesting reimbursement; include expenses for any handouts and other necessary materials, as well and each individual’s travel-related expenses.

Session Sponsorship

A session sponsor must be an affiliate member organization, commercial member company, or professional development organization officially affiliated with AALAS. Exceptions may be made in special circumstances considered on a case-by-case basis by the National Meeting Program Committee.

Full Sponsor
To be a full sponsor of a session, the sponsor must intellectually develop the presentation topic and have it accepted on the program as a seminar, special topics lecture, roundtable or workshop. Abstracts do not qualify for sponsorship. Sponsoring organizations must assume responsibility for all associated speaker and other reasonable expenses (if any) for the program event with the possible exception of requesting AALAS may waive registration for speakers that are not AALAS members or commercial exhibitors.

The sponsor will be recognized as being the sponsor in the preliminary and final programs, on the signage outside the meeting room stating they were the full sponsor of this session,

Partial Sponsor
To be a partial sponsor of a session, the sponsor must contribute specific items, such as facility space, equipment, or animals; a set sponsor fee paid to AALAS toward the session (the session leader recommends to the program committee how the funds would be distributed); or full funding for one of the session’s speakers.

Organizations providing partial financial support or some intellectual contributions will be acknowledged in the preliminary and final programs as partial sponsors of the session. Speakers and session moderators can elaborate upon the intellectual or financial support of organizations or individuals more specifically at appropriate times during applicable sessions.