Information for Poster Presenters

We are so excited to welcome you as a poster presenter at the virtual 2020 ICEC! Because this year’s conference is virtual, poster preparation will be somewhat different this year than it has been in the past. Your poster materials will be available to attendees on-demand throughout the week of the conference as well as for three months following the conference to anyone who has access to the virtual event platform. On 10 September 2020, we held a Poster Presenter Information Session and Q&A; view the recording of that meeting here.

We encourage you to download the Poster Presenter badge  and use it in your email signature, on your website, on social media, etc. to let your colleagues know that you will be presenting a poster at this year’s ICEC.

Below you will find all of the information you will need to prepare and submit your poster presentation.

ICEC organizers encourage poster presenters to watch this YouTube video on creating a better scientific poster in less time. You are not required to use this format, but the conference organizers think it may improve the poster presentation experience. Mike Morrison, the graduate student who created this video, has also shared free poster templates for implementing his recommendations, which you can adapt to your needs.

Please submit your poster in ONE of these formats:

1. A traditional one-page poster as you would have prepared and printed it for an in-person conference. Your PDF poster should be no larger than 48” X 48” square (the usual size of physical posters at ICEC).
2. Up to three (3) slides prepared in a presentation software such as PowerPoint. These should include no more than (3) standard widescreen format slides.

Poster Guidelines:

• Let the poster do the work – your audience should not have to interpret the message.
• Make your poster simple and to the point. Avoid jargon.
• Use your poster to show, not tell. Express your points as graphics (graphs, charts, illustrations, and photographs). Make sure to include captions.
• Keep it visually clean; avoid many jagged edges; guide the viewer by using a visual logic with a hierarchical structure with section headings to emphasize the main points.
• State your main points in large type-face headings; use smaller typeface for details.
• Summarize your results/findings with bullet points.
• Catch your reader’s attention with accent colors for contrast and to highlight main points.
• Use borders or white space to separate sections and increase legibility.
• Make all elements, even the figure legends, visible to the person viewing the poster or watching the video.
• Use large, bold fonts. Text color should highly contrast the background color for legibility for all attendees, including those who are colorblind.
• Use standard fonts. Generally sans serif fonts (e.g., Helvetica) are good for titles. Use a font with serifs for text (e.g., Times New Roman) – they help guide the viewer’s eye.
• There will be a space in your virtual poster board to share additional PDF files or handouts if you would like.

In order to preserve the portion of the poster session that involves authors verbally sharing their work with attendees, each poster presenter is asked to submit a video of no more than 5 minutes discussing their poster. Some helpful tips on recording your video are include:

• Time your presentation and stay within your allotted time frame (5 minutes)
• Make sure you are in a well-lit and quiet area
• Dress as if you were providing the presentation in person
• Adjust your screen so that your eyeline is level with your camera. Use a stand, stack of books or boxes if needed to raise your laptop or screen
• Consider your background, and choose a background that does not interfere with your presentation; or you may consider using a “virtual” background under “settings” in Zoom
• Look into the camera while you are presenting; attendees will feel much more a part of the presentation
• Deliver your message so that you sound sincere, believable, and prepared
• View the recording of your presentation before submitting it so that you can edit or re-record it if needed
• Please note: You should NOT record a voiceover of your poster. We need you to record yourself discussing your poster.

Record your presentation using any program/platform you choose. You can upload your video to YouTube (preferred as this makes setting up your virtual poster space easy for us) or use Zoom’s cloud that will enable you to create a link to your video. If you record it on the cloud, you will be able to find your presentation in the recordings section of your Zoom account. Zoom will email you when the recording is ready.

Review the instructions for recording a presentation in Zoom using a computer. NEW: The latest version of Zoom also lets you use your PowerPoint slides as a virtual background with controls to progress through the slides, which could be an interesting way to record your presentation as well!

During the conference, poster presenters will have the opportunity to turn on a live chat window for their poster to allow attendees to chat with them in real time. They can also disable the chat feature so that there is just an “ask a question” button that will send the poster author an email from the attendee with any questions. Please note: The live chat will be visible to all attendees, not private conversations.

The Live Chat window is on the right. Poster presenters can turn on this feature during the conference.

Attendees can click on the “Ask a Question” button (below the presenter’s picture), and an email will be sent to the presenter.

As usual, unless you opted out of having your poster judged (an opt-out was available during the abstract submission process), at least three poster judges will rate your poster using a pre-established set of criteria. Poster judging will be conducted separately from attendee viewing of posters this year. Click here to view the poster judging criteria for Research posters (page 1) and the Innovations posters (page2). Poster presenters will be asked to be available live for a Q&A session with their assigned poster judges lasting approximately 5 minutes per poster at a date and time to be determined. This will be a private Q&A session, with just the poster presenter and the judges reviewing their poster. You will be asked to briefly introduce yourself and your poster topic in 30-60 seconds. They will then ask a few questions. We will attempt to group presenters with multiple posters together so that you can present each poster consecutively to the judges in one meeting, but we cannot guarantee that this will always be possible.

Downloads

Click below to download the presenter badge for use on social media, email signatures etc.

Download the ICEC 2020 Zoom Background

Download the ICEC 2020 PowerPoint Template

After the Conference

Posters and the recorded videos will be available in the conference site for up to three (3) months following the conference, potentially giving your work additional exposure.

Questions?

Feel free to contact Diane Cole at dcole@aaceonline.com for questions or if you need assistance in uploading your presentation.