Poster/Slides tips

Time to make your poster/slides for presenting your work! Please, find some tips below.

For both poster and slides, common pieces of advice are:

• The content is the most important: it’s really an art to be able to use fancy styles while being crystal clear, be careful or use simple styles (no shame, most people use the same basic latex style, or just blank slides, it’s perfectly fine!), and avoid dense poster/slides.
• Not too many colours: the most important keywords could be coloured, or in bold.
• Not too much text: in general, the less text the better. Avoid full sentences, try to use graphics/pictures to help to visualise.
• Not too many details: you can refer to the paper for details. Your presentation should lead people to read your paper, you don’t have to pack everything in it.
• Relax! Nobody is going to judge you, we all know how stressful it can be to present its work.
• Enjoy the workshop and the conference (even before your presentation)!

Poster

• Information from ACL’s website:
  • Poster size: 
    Posters should be no wider than 91 cm (36 in) and no higher than 122 cm (48 in), in vertical/portrait orientation. A0 paper (in vertical/portrait orientation) meets these requirements.
  • Poster printing option: 
    If you cannot print your poster before travelling, there will be an A3 printer at the conference registration desk which can be used. If you need to use this option, please contact the information desk early to make sure there is time to print the posters before your session. Larger sizes (e.g. A0) can be printed in photoshops in Florence (note that shops will be closed on Sunday). The registration desk will provide information about the shops closest to the conference venue.
  • Set-up and preparation:
    Please arrive during the preceding break (at least 20 minutes before the start of the session) to find your poster’s location and to mount your poster using the tape provided. Poster locations will be listed in a guide distributed to all participants, and volunteers will be available to assist you if needed.
  • Cleanup:
    Please remove your poster right after the poster session ends; do not leave your poster in the room, as space will be needed for posters in the next session.
• A poster has to attract people: the main idea and the main findings should be clear even if you look at it during only 1 mn.
• A poster is a base for a discussion, prepare a speech (about 2-5 mn) that goes quickly through the poster (main problem, main results), people will ask further details about what they are more interested in.
• Font: the title should be readable from about 3-5 meters, the rest from about 1-2 meter.
• It’s generally easier to keep a traditional reading path (left to right, up to bottom), either by columns or by raws, to ensure readability.
• The sections generally follow the paper:  a first frame about the motivations (what is the problem, why it is interesting) that may be based on an example, then the approach and the contributions, and then the experiments, the results and a conclusion (possibly acknowledgements and references, but not mandatory. No abstract.).
• Time for networking: always give your name to people coming to see your poster, and try to ask their name and affiliation: you’re also there to meet people, and the people coming to see you are interested in your work, so you probably have things in common.
• Come with at least one printed version of your paper, to be able to refer to it if needed.
• Bring something to drink (you’re going to talk a lot!), and something to eat.
• If you can, print your poster on a fabric: you can fold it in your bag!
• Pre-print your poster on an A4 page, it should be readable. Put it in your office and ask your colleagues to check for typos and to give feedback.
• If you use LateX, tikzposter provides many ready-to-use templates, see the guide.
• Many useful tips here, also some pieces of advice here and here.
• See some examples made by the chairs here, here (see the original powerpoint file), here (get the source files on Overleaf), and here.

Slides

• Time slot available: 15 mn (+ 5 mn questions). Your chair will show you papers indicating the time left during your talk.
• In general, we count 1 slide per minute, so you should have about 15 slides (of course, you will spend less time on some slides, and more on others, it’s an average).
• For short presentations, you don’t need to repeat the outline after each part. Present your plan only at the beginning (or after the introduction).
• The presentation follows the structure of the paper: motivations (what you’re working on, and why it’s interesting), your approach/methodology, the data and the setting, the results and the conclusion /take-home message. However, the paper contains more than the slides, you have to select the most important content.
• Try to have a sentence linking each of your slides, it’ll help you to not get lost, and it’ll help the audience to follow your story.
• You could have a “Thank!” slide, at the end. It helps to finish your talk.
• If needed, prepare backup slides, after your last slides, that you could use to answer questions (additional results, more details on the data…).
• Be prepared, do some dry-runs with colleagues/friends/family to check that you’re not going over time. Look at people when you’re talking, not at your slides or your notes (but you can have some, don’t worry!).
• The day of the presentation, you will talk faster. Try to think about that, and slow yourself. Having some points of reference can be helpful (slide 5, I should be at 5 mn, it seems that I’m going a bit too fast).
• Be in the room at least 10-15 min before the beginning of your session to meet the chair. You may have to come earlier in the day to put your presentation on the computer.
• Try to have some water.
• If you use LateX, Beamer provides easy to use styles, take a look at Overleaf. Feel free to use Powerpoint or Keynote (on Mac, you can record and time your presentation).
• See some tips here.
• See some examples made by the chairs here, here and here.