82ndAnnual Meeting of The American Society of Mammalogists

Instructions For Oral Presentations

Preparation Of Slides
Your oral presentation will be greatly enhanced and much more professional if you incorporate professionally produced slides. High-quality slides with computer-generated graphics and charts can greatly enhance your presentation. We urge you to find a local production facility which can produce the quality of slides your presentation deserves.

Size and Quality Of Letter
Lettering is the most critical element in slide production. Some rules of thumb to follow are as follows:

• 8 lines of type per slide maximum
• 50 words per slide maximum
• type styles that are plain, thus easier to read
• space between lines at least double spaced

Do NOT photograph entire tables from theses or publications. They will not meet these guidelines. Remember the 12-minute time constraint. Carefully choose what you want to say and limit your slides to the number necessary to deliver that message.
Give people enough time to assimilate the information on each slide. Your audience is intelligent but less familiar with your specific research.

Duties Before And After The Oral Presentation
Arrive at your session 15 minutes before it begins so that you can meet the Session Chair and can verify that the projectionist has your slides.
Label slide carousels using masking tape and indicate clearly Room Number, Time of talk, Number of talk (see program), and Last Name of first author and/or presenter, if different.

Empty carousels will be available in the slide preview room. Please return empty carousels immediately after your session to make them available to subsequent speakers.

Pick up your slides after your session. Projectionists are not responsible for slides left in rooms or the slide preview room.

Delivery Of The Oral Presentation

Each paper is allotted 15 minutes, allowing no more than 12 minutes for the talk and 3 minutes for questions. A buzzer will sound at 12 minutes to alert the speaker, and the Session Chair will interrupt talks that exceed 13 minutes.

Remain calm and continue your presentation even in the event of technical problems (e.g., a burned-out projector bulb, jammed or inverted slides). The session must stay on time, so 15 minutes is all that anyone will get.

The Session Chair, not the speaker, asks for questions from the audience. The Chair also signals when to break-off questions so that the session remains on time. The speaker is free to select questions from the audience once so instructed by the Chair.