BWB2012: Types of Sessions
Sessions at Biodiversity Without Boundaries typically fall into three types: oral presentations (including panels), workshops, and posters. Here are some brief descriptions and tips for these types of sessions to help you determine the best one to meet your goals. We certainly invite creativity, so if you have other ideas for your session, please contact Judy Soule to ensure that we can accommodate your needs as a presenter.
Oral Presentations
Oral presentations allow presenters to deliver their information and ideas directly to their audience, and provide time for questions and discussions. Sessions range from 20 to 60 minutes (including Q&A time), and are emceed to ensure timeliness, enable discussion, and facilitate flow between presenters.
Oral presentations are typically—but not necessarily!—accompanied by a visual aid, such as a PowerPoint presentation. Here are some sites that offer guidance for preparing PowerPoint presentations:
- Presenting with PowerPoint: 10 do’s and don'ts
- Rethinking the Design of Presentation Slides: The Assertion-Evidence Structure
Panels
There’s no need to go it alone! We welcome presenters to invite other speakers to join their session as panelists, each typically with their own mini-presentation on an aspect of the same topic. Panel organizers are responsible for identifying, recruiting, and organizing the panels. Please submit just one proposal for the entire panel that provides the overall topic and a list of panelists (both invited and confirmed).
File Logistics
The computers in the session rooms will be Windows XP-based PCs with Microsoft Office 2007, including PowerPoint, and Windows Media Player. All presentations will be uploaded by conference staff onto conference laptops in each session room; personal laptops cannot be used for presentations. (Instructions for naming your file and providing it to conference staff will be emailed to presenters.)
Macintosh Users: To convert an Apple Keynote presentation to a PowerPoint presentation, follow the instructions at Keynote 4.0 Help. Please make sure that all inserted pictures are either JPEG or PNG file-types. Quicktime (.mov) files are an acceptable video format.
Workshops
Workshops are sessions in which the “audience” is actively engaged in problem-solving, interacting with tools, and/or creating action steps related to a topic. Workshop leaders might open the session with a brief oral presentation, but primarily serve as facilitators to the interaction among participants and the progress of the session.
The key to a successful workshop is to have a clearly stated goal of what you would like the workshop to generate—for example, new ideas about how to solve a particular problem, or feedback on the functionality of a particular tool—and enough background information available for your participants to readily understand the issue.
Posters
Posters provide a summation of a topic that can be scanned, read, and/or re-read by participants anytime during the conference. Poster topics may fall under any of the conference tracks. Posters are highly effective for presenting results—such as of field studies, research projects, development plans, etc.—and high-level views of emerging issues, but can address any stage of a project or idea.
Here are some sites that offer poster-design tips:
Format
Posters should be no larger than 30" x 40" (76cm x 101cm), with either portrait or landscape orientation. Should you require more space, please contact Marta VanderStarre.
Posters will be displayed on easels we provide—no mounting is necessary. NatureServe will provide the necessary fasteners.
If you do not have access to a large poster printer, you can have your poster printed at a local printing/photocopy company near you.
Display
Posters must be presented when you register. Posters will be hung in place Tuesday morning.
You must register to attend at least one day of the conference for your poster to be displayed. Poster authors should plan to be near your posters to talk with viewers during the afternoon breaks.
Posters will be recycled at the end of the conference. Should you wish to retain yours, please notify us when you register to make arrangements for you to retrieve it or have it sent to you at your expense.