Presentation guidelines

Please follow the guidelines for oral presentations, poster pitches and posters carefully to make sure that you are well prepared for presenting your research.

"Best presentation course" Register here by 15 May

‘Best presentation’ course to boost your message

Doing top-notch science is one thing, delivering a great talk about it is another. Put these together, and you will go a long way! The good news is that giving great presentations is a skill you can learn: Frédéric Schütz (SIB Group Leader and member of the SIB Training Group) will give a 2.5 hour virtual course on best practices for giving and structuring presentations in May 2024. The course is free of charge and we really encourage you to attend if your abstract is selected for an oral presentation.

The course is followed by small group work on 31 May to give you the possibility to practise your talk and receive feedback.

23 May 2024 (9:30) - part 1 

This part will highlight best practices for giving a presentation, pitfalls you may encounter, and tell you how to engage with an on-site and virtual audience at the same time.

28 May 2024 (9:30) - part 2 

The second part will offer you the possibility to practise your presentation and receive feedback from the course organizer and participants, which will be split into small groups. Each group should plan up to two hours for the presentation-feedback round.

Register here by 15 May

Oral presentations

Presentation slot and duration

All oral presentations will take place in the parallel sessions on 25 and 26 June. Information on your exact presentation slot can be found in the conference agenda.

Duration: 15 minutes (12 minutes talk + 3 minutes Q&A).
Content: Introduce the scientific question, key results, future directions, and project challenges

Slide preparation and submission - Deadline: Monday 17 June

  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9.
  • Formats:  PowerPoint (.pptx) or PDF (.pdf)
  • Design: Ensure slides are color-blind friendly. For guidance, see sections [3-5] of the poster guidelines.
  • Email slides to sibdays@sib.swiss by Monday 17 June.
  • File naming: DATE_TIME_SURNAME (e.g., 25JUNE_1300-1400_MILLER).
  • For oral talks including videos, submit separate mp4 files named DATE_TIME_SURNAME_VIDEO-FILE-NAME (e.g., 25JUNE_1130-1200_MILLER_Video-1)

If you indicated that you will bring a poster too, please look at the Poster section below for more information on the poster format; a simple PowerPoint template for the virtual poster can be found in the Poster guidelines. Don’t forget to upload your poster by 7 JUNE.

Poster pitch + poster

Presentation slot and duration

All poster pitches will take place in the parallel sessions on 25 and 26 June. Information on your exact presentation slot can be found in the conference agenda

Duration: 3 minutes (no Q&A).
Content: Briefly introduce your scientific question, one key result, and inform the audience where and when they can find you at your poster.

Slide preparation and submission - Deadline: Monday 17 June

  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9.
  • Acceptable Formats: PowerPoint (.pptx) or PDF (.pdf).
  • Email slides to sibdays@sib.swiss.
  • File naming: DATE_TIME_SURNAME (e.g., 25JUNE_1130-1200_MILLER).
  • For pitches including videos, submit separate mp4 files named DATE_TIME_SURNAME_VIDEO-FILE-NAME (e.g., 25JUNE_1130-1200_MILLER_Video-1).


Poster details

All details on the poster format can be found in the below; a simple PowerPoint template for your virtual poster can be found in the Poster guidelines. Don’t forget to upload your poster by 7 JUNE.

Posters

Poster session schedule

Poster sessions will take place on 25 June (15:00 - 16:15) and 26 June (14:15 - 15:30).


Poster Presentation Details

  • Printing and Setup: Poster presenters are responsible for printing and bringing their posters to the conference. Ensure that your posters are easily readable from a distance of 2-3 meters; this includes clear, legible text and suitably sized figures and photos. A good test is to view your poster full screen on a computer from a little distance to check readability and clarity.
  • Interactive Screens: Presenters selected to use interactive screens will receive specific instructions via a separate email.

Poster presenters are responsible for printing and bringing their posters to the conference. 

Poster presenters who are benefiting from an interactive screen to present their research will be informed in a separate email.

Poster prizes

Poster presenters who wish to be considered for the poster prize MUST UPLOAD THEIR POSTER BY 14 JUNE  in the virtual poster gallery.

The Scientific Committee will make a first evaluation of the virtual posters and make the final decision on winners during the conference. Three prizes will be awarded during the closing remarks at the end of the SIB days. 

Structure 

We encourage all poster presenters to prepare a simple graphical abstract of their poster based on Mike Morrison’s better poster ideas. You may choose vertical or horizontal format for both, the printed and the digital poster. Please note that the poster wall is 1.20 m (~47 inches) wide.

Printed poster

Participants will look at your poster from a distance of 2–3 m: the writing should be easily readable and the drawings, figures and photos not too small. A useful test is to sit in front of your computer screen (with a little distance) and to check whether you can read and understand all the text and figures when the image is shown full screen.

How to upload your digital poster ? 

You must upload your poster in PDF format (50mb max): connect to the conference platform, go to "My posters" and follow the instructions.




On-site organization

All poster presenters should have received an email indicating the time and date of their poster presentation. 

We will assign your poster a number to indicate where you have to hang it. You will find your number and the poster plan on our website in early June. Posters must be mounted in the morning of Tuesday 25 June before 12:00.

If you have any questions on the different formats or the organization, feel free to contact us at sibdays@sib.swiss!

1. Maintain a storyline

With a poster, you are presenting what you have done, why and how you have conducted your analyses, what the results are and how they fit with other findings in your research field. Make sure that the text and the graphics on your poster present a simple and cohesive story. In particular, focus on one key research question from beginning to end, rather than trying to cover everything you did.

2. Keep it simple and readable

  • Left: main finding as one plain English sentence + graphical abstract
  • Right: 1 question + 1 result/conclusion

Layout 2

  • Left: main finding as one plain English sentence + graphical abstract
  • Right: up to three different highlights

3. When it comes to text, less is more

Convey as much of the information as possible in a visually appealing way (e.g. diagrams, images, flow charts) with limited text. A poster should be a visual support to explain your research, not a copy-paste of parts of a journal article. People will have only limited time to read your poster.

If you need advice and inspiration about how to create a great poster, we recommend the #betterposter scheme and blogspot [1-2].

4. Be colour-blind friendly

Avoid using colour combinations that will be difficult to distinguish for people with colour blindness. This applies both to poster backgrounds and diagrams and to microscopic images. For more information, go to [3-5].

5. Acknowledge all authors and funding sources

Include the logo of the institution(s) you are affiliated with, and other funding sources where applicable. There will be a comment box below your poster in the virtual poster gallery (only visible to registered participants) where you can put your email address as well as the website of your group, so that people can contact you if they want to know more about your work.

If you are an SIB Employee, you can use the poster template on the intranet. Different formats of the SIB logo can be downloaded from here.

6. Be aware of social media

If you do not wish for others to mention/share your work on the social media, blogs, etc., put a ‘no Twitter’ icon in the upper left corner of your poster.


References

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RwJbhkCA58

[2] http://betterposters.blogspot.com/

[3] https://knightlab.northwestern.edu/2016/07/18/three-tools-to-help-you-make-colorblind-friendly-graphics/

[3] https://venngage.com/blog/color-blind-friendly-palette/

[4] https://www.colorbrewer2.org/

Software demonstration

Software demonstrations will take place during the poster sessions on Tuesday 25 and Wednesday 26 June. As with poster presentations, software presenters are asked to prepare a simple visual overview of the software following the poster guidelines.

We recommend that you prepare to deliver a short (live) demo, 5 to 7 minutes long, to guide interested participants through your software, followed by a few minutes for questions.