Instructions for Authors

VTCs are successful, friendly, conferences due mainly to the effort and commitment of paper authors. Since most attendees are authors themselves, there is a fellow-feeling that comes from everyone being in the same boat.

Although printed proceedings of the conference are being produced, these will not be available at the conference. Attendees with laptops will be able to read through presentations from the CD, but you may if you wish bring some printed copies of your paper to distribute to interested attendees at your session.

Oral Presentations

Oral presentation slots are 18 minutes long in total - that includes questions and handovers. Session chairs will hold you this time, and are under strict instructions to terminate presentations which overrun. If your presentation were to overrun, you are effectively stealing time from colleagues which follow you. Strict adherence to timing within sessions is also required in order to allow attendees to move between sessions.

To allow for questions, you should aim for your presentation to be about 13-14 minutes long. Longer presentations mean that only a single question can be accommodated, or even none at all, and questions are often the most interesting part for both speaker and audience. Remember to include the ‘why’ of your work - not just the ‘how’, and avoid the trap of trying to squeeze in too much detail. Attendees will be able to read your paper at their leisure if it sparks their interest. Practice and time yourself.

Each presentation room is equipped with an OHP and a computer projector capable of a resolution of 1024 by 748. Computers will not be provided. If you want to use the computer projector, you must provide your own computer. You should test this in the room prior to the start of the session (before going for coffee).

If you want to present via computer, but don’t have a laptop, you may be able to present using the laptop of another presenter in the same session. While we are not able to arrange this for you, your session chair has the contact details of all other presenters in your session. You are more likely to find a friendly neighbor with a USB slot for a flash card than with a CDROM or floppy drive nowadays. If you go down this road, bring backup transparencies.

Make sure your slides are readable. Aim for text at least as large as 20pt. Be particularly careful of diagrams and graphs. If you use the computer projector, remember the contrast will be lower using the projector than on a computer screen. Black lines against dark colors (anything other than yellow, light green or of course white) can be very difficult to see.

Oral presenters should prepare a short (remember the time constraints) biography to allow the session chair to introduce them. Oral presenters should be in their session from the start and remain until the end, as attendees often wish to ask further questions individually after the session. Each session chair is being sent copies of all the papers in their session, and has been asked to contact you. Session chairs will be detailed in the final program on the web site shortly.

Finally, remember your talk may not overrun. If you risk it, you may end up without the opportunity to present your conclusions, which are the most important part.

Poster Presentations

A poster presentation is in many ways similar to an oral presentation, in that you have to grab your audience’s interest and convey the main points of the work to them. You have the advantage in a poster that the complete poster is visible at the same time, but you should still not try to include too much. To be readable when passing, text should be at least 20pt. Print the title in much larger text across the top of the poster. Don’t simply put up an enlarged version of your paper. Almost no-one will bother to read it, and those that do will have that information available on the CD anyway.

Poster boards are approximately 1000 wide by 2200 high mm. They will accept push pins, which will be provided. The presentation boards will be numbered, and you should check your paper number in the proceedings to find which board to use. Posters should be put up during the half hour preceding the session and removed at the end of it. You should stay by your poster throughout the session as attendees will move between sessions and will visit the poster sessions throughout the session period.