Guidelines and Information for Speakers

In case you haven’t received a personal invitation to upload your oral or quick fire presentation via email beforehand, please contact for your login data*:

www.webges.com/cslide/eurospine2014
username: *
password: *

Please note that traditional slide projection is not possible. Presentations will be uploaded electronically to a centralised server in the Preview Centre. Please note that your own laptop cannot be used for presentation in the lecture halls. There are two options to deliver your presentation material:

1. Upload your presentation prior to the meeting:
Speakers have the opportunity to upload their presentations prior to the meeting until
Sept 29, 2014, 16:00 CET+1!

After that deadline, an upload will be possible on-site (see 2) and still online. If you decide to upload your presentation(s) prior to the meeting, your presentation(s) will be ready for testing in the Preview Centre on-site. Speakers are reminded to check in at the Preview Centre's welcome desk at least 90 minutes prior to their scheduled presentation, even if they have already uploaded their presentation prior to the meeting.

2. Deliver your presentation on-site:
Speakers are requested to hand in their presentations to the Preview Centre staff not later than 90 minutes before the beginning of their session, please check in even if they have already uploaded their presentation prior to the meeting.

3. Presentation Upload:
Please read the Guidelines and Technical Specifications below carefully!
The Preview Centre is located Hall Bellecour next to the Spine Village at the congress centre and open during the following hours:

Tuesday, Sept 30: 08:00 – 17:00
Wednesday, Oct 01: 07:30 – 17:00
Thursday, Oct 02: 07:30 – 17:00
Friday, Oct 03: 07:30 –15:30

Technical Specifications and General Info for Presenters

We welcome your participation in the programme of EUROSPINE 2014.

Timing of Session
In order to keep the sessions running to schedule and allow questions from the audience it is very important to keep the presentations within the allotted time: Your slides will fade automatically after the allotted time, there is a stopwatch running for your control.

In this respect we strongly recommend that speakers ensure that their presentation does not exceed the allotted time as we expect the Chairperson to strictly adhere to the timetable. Stopping a Speaker from completing a presentation is very embarrassing for all concerned and hopefully will not be necessary if everyone respects this requirement.

Regular Presentation: 5 minutes (plus discussion/change 3 min)
QuickFire Presentation: 3 minutes (plus discussion/change 2 min)

Conflict of Interest
EUROSPINE is committed to avoid potential conflicts of interest: any financial relationship between the speaker/chairperson and a company manufacturing or distributing a product must be disclosed and openly shared. Conflicts of interest need to be disclosed for each author on the second slide.Presentations which do not follow this prerequisite cannot be shown.
During the presentation/discussion open publicity or unfair and/or unsupported information for products/organisations/business should be avoided. Commercial logos or photographs should not be used (other than in the designated industry workshops).


Presentation Material
Please note that only digital material will be accepted for oral presentations. Speakers may submit their presentation material online prior to the congress. The presentations will be transferred to the session rooms electronically. The material remains the property of the speakers.
Speakers are reminded to check in at the Preview Centre's welcome desk at least 90 minutes prior to their scheduled presentation, even if they have already uploaded their presentation prior to the meeting.

Onsite presentation upload procedure:

Check in at the Preview Centre's welcome desk to receive your login details Log into an available computer and upload your presentation Presentations can be checked in presenter mode and edited onsite

Technical Specifications

Data carriers: Please use one of the following data carriers: CD-ROM, DVD, USB stick, external hard disk. CD-ROM and/or DVD should have an iso9660 file system. The presentation should not be saved solely on a notebook, hand held, (PDA's ...). PowerPoint versions that can be used are: 97, 2000, XP, 2003, 2007 and 2010. Save your PowerPoint presentation as ".pptx", ".ppt" or ".pps". Do not use the "pack&go" function. Please make sure that all movie files are saved separately on the data carrier. For embedded movies please use "mpeg1", "mpeg2", "wmv" or "avi". For best replayability please use only common and widespread video encodings (codecs), preferably in their newest version. File size: The size of one presentation should not exceed 500 MB, if uploaded online prior to the meeting. There is no size limit for presentations uploaded onsite at the Preview Centre (it is however recommended that presentations do not exceed 500 MB). For images use ".bmp", ".jpeg"/".jpg" or ".gif" formats. Please be aware that Office 2007 and newer does compress images by default, which may lead to reduced image quality. Disable image compression before saving/inserting images, to prevent this. Please use 4:3 as presentation format. Flash-animations are not supported. Should they be essential to your presentation please contact the EURSPINE Office. All files should be in the same folder. Files not included in the presentation (movies...) should be named numerical in ascending order (e.g.:1.mpg, 2.bmp, 3.wmv, 4.jpg...). Do not use any passwords or encryption for your files. Do not use Macros within your presentation. We recommend using default fonts like Calibri, Arial, Verdana or Times New Roman only. If you have to use other fonts, please make sure that they are saved as 'embedded fonts' in the presentation (when saving the file proceed as follows: 'save as'; 'name of presentation'; under 'tools': 'safe options' and select 'embed true type fonts' and 'embed all characters'). Please use only regular characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, spaces, underscore and dots) for your filenames and do not use special characters (accents, umlauts, foreign symbols. For mathematic symbols please use only characters that are listed under 'Latin fonts' (Unicode or DOS: Western Europe). Please use only "WinZip" to pack your data (free download of the current versions at www.winzip.com). If you are using PowerPoint, Mac or Keynote, please export your presentation as ".pptx" or ".ppt" for Windows.

Presentation
1. Arrive in the room leaving sufficient time before the session. Introduce yourself to the moderator(s) and to the room assistant. Make the moderator familiar with the pronunciation of your name and institution. This is critical in order for the moderator to run the session smoothly, to evaluate how fluent your English is, and consequently if you may need any help in reformulating questions from the audience when difficult to understand.
2. Walk on the stage to become familiar with the system, microphone and pointing device (the mouse).
3. The moderator may ask you in advance for a specific topic you would like to address to complement your presentation, in case there are no questions from the audience. Do not hesitate to prepare for it. The moderator may also propose a question of his own.
4. When the previous presentation is over, and before the moderator calls you, stand up and approach the stage sideways in order to be ready, but not to disturb the ongoing discussion. Approach the room assistant, who will help you set the microphone.
5. Strictly follow the instructions of the moderator(s), especially regarding the time allotted for your talk.
6. The blinking digital clock on the speaker's stand starts blinking at 1:10 (70seconds left) for ten seconds as well as for the last 30 seconds to remind you to end the presentation.
7. Speak directly into the microphone in a normal voice and do not touch the microphone.
8. It is recommended to use the mouse as a pointer, and to follow the arrow on the monitor in front of you. This will prevent you from turning your head, speaking away from the microphone, and not looking into the direction of the audience. This will be much more pleasant for the attendees. If you are using the laser pointer anyhow, make slow movements to give the participants a chance to find the red spot. When you do not point at anything, do not keep your finger on the switch - this uses up the batteries and may even be dangerous for audience eyes!

Hints for Preparation
1. Do not cover too much ground. Leave the fine details for publication and discuss only the major points of your work, supported by the conclusions drawn from your data. Remember you are trying to communicate with the audience in a limited time. A rushed presentation is of no use to the audience or to your reputation.
2. Write out your presentation and practice it with a critic. This may help you to organise your material.
3. Practice and edit your presentation until you can deliver it clearly and understandably within the time allotted to you. If you exceed the allotted time, the session moderator may have to terminate your presentation.
4. Simplify – simplify – simplify: Keep data on slides simple. If there is an abundance of data, divide it into several slides. Simplify material on the slide to illustrate a single point or idea. The content of a slide should be comprehensible in 20 seconds.
5. Limit your slides to not more than two for each minute of your presentation.

Think of people in the rear of the meeting room and use large, legible letters. A message slide should have no more than 7 lines with 7 words or less per line. Spaces between lines should be at least the height of a capital letter. Use only light colours such as white yellow, light orange, light green or light blue on a dark background, such as dark blue or black (white on black background is better than black on white). Remember that almost 20% of the population is unable to see red letters.

6. Be sure the information on the slides of your radiographs is well presented – enlargements of the significant areas and arrows are often helpful.
7. Do not overuse fancy animations available in PowerPoint.
8. Avoid any sexist jokes, comments and slides.
9. Patient names should not appear on the slides. This would be a violation of patient confidentiality.