Guidelines for PowerPoint Presentations

Speaker Ready Rooms will be located in the following three locations. You must use the Speaker Ready Room in the same building as your scheduled presentation. Check your notification e-mail to verify your session location and corresponding Speaker Ready Room.

San Diego Convention Center
Room 11AB, Upper Level

San Diego Marriott Marquis & Marina
San Francisco Room, Lobby Level

Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego
Gregory, Second Level

You must bring your PowerPoint presentation on a CD-R, DVD-R, or USB Flash Drive (Memory Stick, Jump Drive, etc.). 

Compliance Instructions

Movies 

  • Please take steps to compress your videos. Uploading time for uncompressed videos will take away time from your presentation and give no better quality than a modern MPEG-4 codec. We can only accept movies created as MPGs, WMVs, or with the following codecs: MPEG-4 (Divx, Xvid, or WMVs) Indeo, Cinepack, Techsmith, Animated GIF, and Flash. 
  • .MOV files are NOT supported in Windows PowerPoint.
  • Your movies must not fill the screen completely. In the session room, you will use a mouse to advance your slides. You can only advance your PowerPoint with a mouse by clicking on the slide, not the movie itself.

DVDs 

  • If you plan to play a DVD as part of your presentation, please notify a technician in the Speaker Ready Room so that arrangements can be made for assistance in your session room.
  • If you have special fonts in your PowerPoint presentation, please embed them when you save your presentation. You can specify this by clicking “Save As” in the file menu. In the “Save As” window, click “Tools” and select “Save Options” from the drop-down menu. In the “Save Options” box, click the check-box to “Embed True Type Fonts.” Then, save your presentation as usual.

Using a Macintosh personal laptop computer  

  • All Macintosh laptop computer users must notify a supervisor in the Speaker Ready Room at least 6 hours prior to your presentation in order to guarantee compatibility with the change in platforms.

back to top
 

Helpful Tips

Clarity of PowerPoint slides is vital for a successful scientific presentation. Helpful tips are provided below:

  • Be consistent. Using a uniform background color, text size, text color, and font throughout your slide presentation makes it easier for the audience to follow the flow of your ideas. When using PowerPoint, it is a good idea to build your presentation using the slide master, which helps keep your presentation consistent.
  • Use color and contrast. Dark backgrounds with light type are easiest to read. Suggested background colors include black, blue, and maroon, or gradients of blue to black, gray to black, and magenta to black. Preferred text colors are white and yellow. Use black drop-shadows when using non-black backgrounds in order to help the text stand out from the background.
  • Use a maximum of 8 or 9 images per 10 minutes of an oral presentation.
  • Leave a blank space that is at least the height of a capital letter between each line of print.
  • Sans serif fonts project better and are easier to read. Examples of sans serif fonts include Arial, Helvetica, and Verdana 18-point font size.
  • For legibility, keep words to a minimum. You should have no more than five-to-eight lines of type with, at most, five-to-seven words per line. Type should be well-spaced and sized in 30- to 36-point font for headings and at least 24-point font for body copy.
  • Keep “custom animations” and “slides transitions” simple and use them sparingly.

back to top