ICSE 2003 Speaker and Session Chair Guidelines

High-quality presentations are essential for the success of ICSE 2003. To help you plan your presentation for ICSE 2003, we have provided, in this document, important information about the audiovisual equipment that will be available in the meeting rooms, along with guidelines to help you prepare and deliver your presentation. Please read this information carefully and do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

THE SETTING

• Your presentation will be held in one of the meeting rooms of the Hilton Portland & Executive Tower. The presentation rooms vary in capacity from 25 to 800 people. Each presentation room will be equipped with the following presentation equipment:
  • one portable clip-on microphone
  • one screen
  • one electronic data projector
  • one Windows-based PC (Tue, Wed, Thu only)
  Overhead projectors can be made available upon prior request, but we strongly recommend use of the data projector as opposed to overheads.
• For tutorials, workshops and symposia before and after the technical program, the tutorial, workshop and symposia chairs are expected to bring their own laptop computers for projection purposes for all presentations in their workshop, tutorial or symposium. ICSE will provide one data projector per meeting room which can be connected to a PC via a VGA-style 15-pin video connector.
• For all conference presentation tracks on Tue, Wed, and Thu of ICSE 2003, the PC comes with a 3.5" 1.44 MB DOS-format floppy drive and has MS PowerPoint 2000 installed. There will be no Internet access on projection computers. Moreover, you cannot assume a CD drive or audio connections on the projection computer.
• If your presentation is scheduled for Tue, Wed, or Thu, you should bring your talk on a 3.5" floppy disk. There will not be time to connect your own laptop computer to the projection equipment during a session. You are expected to upload your presentation from your floppy disk onto the projection computer BEFORE your session begins. Be sure your presentation is compatible with PowerPoint 2000.
• Even though computer projection is provided, you need to ensure that your presentation will work properly on the provided equipment. We strongly suggest you try out your presentation on the provided equipment in advance, with sufficient time to arrange for overhead slides to be made at one of the local printing facilities if there is a problem. In cases where advance testing is not possible, you may want to bring overhead slides for backup purposes. On Mon evening and all day on Tue, Wed, and Thu, you can try out your presentation in the speakers' ready room located in the Executive Room. This room contains the same projection equipment you will find in the actual meeting rooms. There will be no time extensions for your talk if you encounter technical difficulties. Make sure that the talk file is fully self-contained (i.e., without elements that are linked to off your own machine or requiring special fonts). For example, watch for graphics being replaced by an X.

YOUR SESSION, MEETING YOUR SESSION CHAIR

• Each session has a session chair, who will coordinate your session and introduce you. Check the ICSE 2003 program for the name of your session chair.
• Make sure you (1) meet your session chair before your session so he/she will know who you are; (2) meet your session chair at least 15 minutes before the beginning of your session; and (3) give a short one-paragraph typeset or neatly handwritten biography to your session chair to introduce you.
• For the Tue, Wed, and Thu sessions, you must be present throughout the session in which your presentation occurs.

SPEAKERS' BREAKFAST, DRY-RUN AND READY ROOM

• The speakers' ready room is the Executive Room. It will be available on Mon evening and during the day on Tue, Wed, and Thu of the conference for you to prepare your presentations and make sure that your presentation works with the equipment provided in the actual meeting rooms. For tutorials, workshops and symposia held on other days you can try out the projection equipment in the actual meeting room during the hour prior to the event.
• On Tue, Wed, and Thu, you and your co-authors are invited to attend the speakers' breakfast on the day of your presentation. The speakers' breakfast is in the Council Room the hour preceding the first activity of the day (Tue & Wed 7:30-8:30 am, Thu 8:00-9:00 am).
• Session chairs will meet their presenters for breakfast at the speakers' breakfast on the day of their session.

YOUR PRESENTATION

Here are some helpful hints for both the preparation and delivery of your high-quality talk:

• The ICSE audience draws participants from a wide variety of areas, both from academia and industry. Make sure that your talk includes enough background material and motivation so that it can be understood by those who are not specialists in your area. It is a good idea to have one slide of your talk on motivation and one slide on related work to set the stage.
• Check the conference web site for the time allotted for your talk. Most ICSE 2003 presentations are allotted 30 minutes (25 minutes for talk, 5 minutes for questions). Special talks, such as keynotes, are allotted more time.
• Use at least 24 point type for body text and at least 28 point for titles.
• Use a limited number (i.e., 1-3) of typefaces for your entire presentation. The following typefaces are usually installed on Windows (i.e., on the ICSE 2003 projection computers): Verdana, Arial, Georgia, Times New Roman, and Courier New. Do not use "Comic Sans" or "Tekton/Tecton".
• Use effective colors. Light text on dark background projects better with a data projector, but dark on light is better for transparencies. The resource web pages below have more information on this subject.
• Here are some useful resources with hints and instructions for preparing high-quality talks:
  • http://www.engfnd.org/powerpt.html
  • http://www.engfnd.org/poster.html
  • http://www.presentersonline.com
• Important: Use PowerPoint animation wisely and avoid timed, click-less presentations.
• It is critical that you present your talk and answer questions in the time allotted to you. If your time slot is 30 minutes, then your presentation should be 25 minutes with 5 minutes for questions. Your session chair will manage the talks in the session and keep speakers on track. It is important to have some time at the end of your talk for questions.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. We look forward to your presentations at ICSE 2003 in Portland.

Lori Clarke General Chair

Laurie Dillon & Walter Tichy Program Co-Chairs