Presentation guidelines

We expect to have high-quality oral and poster presentations in BrainSTIM 2020. Young Investigator Awards totaling 1000€ will be awarded to recognize high-quality research of young investigators that is presented in an excellent way. The awards are sponsored by Aalto Health Platform. In order to help you to make your presentation impressive and easy to follow, we provide the following suggestions.

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General guidelines

• Structure your presentation (e.g., Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusion).

• Balance the amount of content in your presentation. Less is often more for effectively conveying your message.

• Ensure that you have sufficient rights to present/publish the content.

• Think about your target audience. Explain key terms and abbreviations clearly.

• Send your material to the organizers by May 12, 2020 (follow the separately provided instructions).

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Oral presentations

• Prepare your oral presentation in advance as a video recording (max. 15-min duration).

• Your presentation may resemble a typical conference talk and be fully based on slides. However, you may want to take advantage of the video format and include, e.g., a software/methods demo, or even a small group discussion, in your presentation.

• Present your slides in the full-screen mode.

• Include a recording of your face, if possible.

• Check your microphone and camera quality in advance by recording a short test video.

• Consider trimming possible transitions from the beginning and end of the recording.

• Accepted video formats: .MOV, .MPEG4, .MP4, .AVI, .WMV

• Suggested recording tools:

  • OBS Studio (Windows, Mac, Linux)

  • Zoom, record a meeting with yourself (Windows, Mac, Linux)

  • QuickTime Player (Mac)

• Suggested editing tools:

  • Movie Maker online (Windows, Mac, Linux)

  • Windows 10 Photos Video Editor (Windows)

  • iMovie (Mac)

• Slide tips:

  • Minimize the number of slides (e.g., 1–2 minutes/slide).

  • Minimize the amount of content on one slide (e.g., max 2 figures, use keywords instead of full sentences).

  • Prefer clear graphics over text whenever possible.

  • Use large enough font size (Preferably at least 24 pt).

  • Avoid tiny details in illustrations. Cover any unnecessary detail in ready-made in figures. Clip the figures to show only the essential.

• Presentation tips:

  • Practice your presentation several times.

  • Simplify the slides to contain only the essential.

  • Find advice from the internet; for example, on YouTube, type “effective scientific conference presentations”

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Poster presentations

• Minimize the amount of unnecessary detail in the poster. Present key ideas and main results that can be understood with quick scanning of the poster.

• Prefer clear graphics over text whenever possible.

• Use large enough font size.

• Avoid tiny details in illustrations. Clip the figures to show only the essential.

• Because you cannot explain your poster face-to-face, consider graphical ways how your poster will guide the reader through the information, e.g., by using arrows.

• Submit your poster as a single-page pdf file (landscape, aspect ratio of 16:9, size max 10 MB).