Program

Presenter Information

Poster Presentation

Poster Presentation Instructions

Posters will be attended at specific times to allow discussion and questions regarding the research. The exhibits will be open during this time as well. All posters must be removed immediately following your assigned poster session. It is the responsibility of the poster presenter to remove the poster. Failure to do so could result in damage to or loss of the unclaimed poster. The Society for Birth Defects Research and Prevention assumes no responsibility for any poster not removed at the end of the session.

Poster material should be organized within an area that is 4 feet high x 6 feet wide. The top of your poster board should contain the following information, with letters at least 3/4 inch high:

  1. Title
  2. Authors
  3. Affiliations

A copy of the abstract should be posted toward the upper-left corner and a set of conclusions toward the lower-right corner of your poster. These should be printed in letters about 1/4 inch high. Poster information should be legible from a distance of at least 3 to 4 feet. Material, including line drawings, should be clearly presented and may be computer generated (laser printing is preferred). Please bring your own pushpins. Poster sessions and times for setup and removal are indicated in the program.

All participants, including those presenting posters, are required to register for the Annual Meeting.

Platform Presentation

Platform Presentation Instructions

The Annual Meeting Agenda has a fixed schedule to allow flexibility when moving between sessions. It is important that you strictly adhere to the times outlined in the program. Please note that you will need to use PowerPoint for your presentation. Files need to be in a PC-compatible format which allows them to run on a PC. Company names, company acknowledgements, and company logos are not permitted anywhere in the slide presentations. In addition, all oral presenters are required to include a disclosure slide in their presentation.

The Society will be utilizing wide screens at the meeting. Please format your slides to the 16:9 format designed to fit the wider screen. If you are unable to update your slides to the widescreen format, they will display on the screen with a black boarder around the unused space on screen.

Download BDRPAM20 Powerpoint template file.

Presentation Tips

Oral presentation of a scientific paper with digital projection is quite different from presentation of the same information in a journal article. In a journal article, all the details of the research must be given to allow the reader to evaluate the science. In an oral presentation, you have a limited amount of time and a limited number of slides in which to get across the major thrust of the study. Details cannot be included, only the major ideas. Therefore, each slide cannot contain more information than the viewer can comprehend in a short time. Design each slide to communicate a single idea quickly! Make the print large enough to be seen on an eight-foot screen from a distance of 100 feet.

It is important that you practice your presentation prior to delivering it in your session. You should limit the number of slides to a maximum of one slide per minute—fewer slides may be preferable for your presentation. In particular, PowerPoint presentations afford the easy opportunity for information overload and can detract from the major points to be emphasized. Keep this in mind when planning your presentation. An exemplary presentation would include at least one introductory slide and a summary slide stating the key conclusions. During your presentation you are encouraged to use the wireless lavaliere microphone so that your voice is projected properly if you turn your face towards the screen.

The following should help you in your presentation preparation:

  1. Prepare your slides to communicate ideas, not details. If someone wants details, let him or her ask you in the discussion period.
  2. Put the minimum amount of information on the slide that is necessary to communicate your idea. After drafting the slide, see what can be left out while still communicating the essential idea. Revise your draft in order to reduce the material to a minimum.
  3. Graphical presentation of data often communicates an idea more quickly than tabular presentation of the same data. Photographs may also be effective but avoid pictures of animals.
  4. A table in a published article is much too detailed for a slide presentation. Take the time to think through what conclusion you want to present from the table and use the least amount of material you can to communicate that idea. In general, a table on a slide should contain no more than three columns and no more than four rows.
  5. A slide presentation should include a title slide, a slide stating the question or hypothesis to be addressed, and a slide describing the overall approach you used to address the question. A "methods" slide or two should be included but should never provide all the details unless the purpose of the talk is to describe the method. Drawings or flow charts can sometimes be used to present complex methods succinctly. The next several slides should present and interpret the results obtained, and a final slide should give the conclusions of the study.
  6. If you have more than one slide per minute of presentation, you have too many slides.
  7. Color and graphics can enhance and clarify your presentation but can also be distracting if not carefully chosen. In general, text shown on a dark background should be very light and text shown on a light background should be very dark. Some color combinations that work fine on a computer monitor do not project well.
  8. If your slide will contain a video, make sure you embed the video in your PowerPoint presentation. The presentation rooms will not have internet so linking to a website will now work.
  9. Be sure to try out your slides or digital presentation before the Annual Meeting to make certain that everything is easy to read from the back of the room.