Virtual Presentation

[download a sample virtual presentation] 4 Mb This sample is  a very compressed executable file. The original file was 142 Mb PowerPoint file.]

[See caution below.  Presentations sent by email will not be accepted or presented]

If you are unable to give your talk in person, IⁿSITE offers the option to make a virtual presentation.  Your paper will be scheduled for presentation.  At your paper's presentation time, we will "play" your presentation and, optionally, set up a question and answer session afterwards.

What is a Virtual Presentation? You create a virtual presentation by creating a self-running slide show that includes a voice narration.  Most people find PowerPoint to be a convenient software tool they can use to create their presentation, but you are welcome to use other tools. Your presentation cannot require special software nor an Internet connection.

PowerPoint includes tools for recording your voice for each slide and then advancing to the next slide at the end of each narration. If you are more technically inclined, you can create more advanced presentations using other tools.

Good Quality Recording. The aspect that may not be obvious is the need to record your voice using a good quality microphone in a quiet setting.  Ideally, have someone from your Audio-Visual department provide you with a high quality microphone and record the presentation in a quiet room.  Otherwise use a microphone that fits close to your mouth, such as the one shown to the right.  The price for such microphones is in the $10-$20 USD range. Do not rely on a laptop’s built in microphone!

If you use slide animation, the result can be very interesting.  Just be sure to make the presentation self-running so that it advances slides automatically.

Scheduling. Your total presentation time should be about 10-12 minutes since listening to a computer talk is more tiring than listening to a person.

What to include (and what to leave out).  We suggest that you start by showing a photo of yourself and narrate a welcome to the audience. This gives your talk a more personal touch. 

Conclude your presentation with an invitation for delegates to contact you by email (and Skype).  Leave your email address on the screen long enough to convey to the audience that you really do want them to contact you.

In 10-minutes, you cannot go over all the points of your paper, so just give enough detail to get the audience interested in following up with you after the conference. They all have access to your paper and many will have read your paper before the conference.

How to get your presentation to us. Your presentation will likely be quite large.  Post Your Presentation on an Accessible Site and send us the link.   We need a single file that contains your self-running presentation and does not require any special software beyond PowerPoint.

•    You can obtain a free account with http://YouSendIt.com and after you upload the file to them, you can have them send us the link.
   
• Our hands-down favorite is to set up a free account with DropBox.  They provide 2 Gb of free online storage (or even more, 2.25 Gb, if you sign up at https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTI2OTcxMzM5 ).   We are big DropBox enthusiasts.  It lets you back up important files to the web, share files easily between home and work computers, set up workgroups of shared storage, or, as needed here, copy files to the "Public" folder and the obtain (by right clicking) the URL to that file.  Anyone who knows the URL has read access to the file, so just send me this URL.   

Do not send huge files by email because this will forever harm your karma and we do not accept presentations sent by email.