Preparing to give a talk

Talks are 12 minutes long with 3 minutes for Q&As. Timings will be strictly enforced. 

For your slides:

• Use PowerPoint to prepare your talk
• Ensure your slide size is set to Widescreen (16:9)
• Animations or video clips, if used, must work within PowerPoint and not rely on additional software (e.g. QuickTime etc.). 

Mac users: if you are preparing your PowerPoint presentation on an Apple Mac we strongly advise you check that it works correctly on a PC to make sure there aren’t any compatibility issues. 

Practicing your talk beforehand:

Try and arrange a time in the month before the conference to give your talk to your supervisors, work colleagues or other students.  

Ask them for feedback, for example:

• Was the talk clear?  Was it easy to follow?
• Was there too much text on the slides or too little?
• Are there too many slides or too few?
• Did you speak loudly and clearly enough?
• Did you speak too fast or too slow?

To feel confident, you must practice; and if you feel confident, your listeners will find it easier to focus on what you are saying.

Please also consider how your presentation will appear to both those watching in person and online (talks will be live-streamed via Zoom).

Many of the points about what makes a good poster, also apply to what makes a good set of slides and talk. Do read these too!

Preparing a conference poster

Full details on preparing and printing posters will be sent to successful applicants. In the meantime, here is some general guidance:

All posters must be A0 size with a landscape orientation (841 mm vertical x 1189 mm horizontal). 

There are lots of ways of designing a good poster but below are some key points:

• Don’t forget to include collaborators, logos of funders and your host institution.
• Think about your title – an interesting title which gets to the heart of what the poster is about and why it matters is more attractive than a technically correct title with scientific names and lots of jargon.
• The best posters use images imaginatively to draw the reader in and communicate the topic of the poster without the reader having to read every word.
• Don’t have too much text and don’t make the text too small.  No text should be too small to read from a distance of about 6 feet. The bigger the better (within reason!).
• Do redraw your figures for your poster – don’t just cut and paste them from a paper or thesis chapter.  The rules about being able to read text from 1.8m applies even more so to the legends and axes on graphs.
• Avoid technical jargon and acronyms.
• Do think about the conservation message of your poster.  Could someone get to the end of your poster and think ‘so what?’  If so, you need to be more explicit about why this work matters to conservation.
• Tell us how to find out more – some people include contact details or a QR code leading to a website; some people have a sign-up sheet where people can leave their email address. 
• Do consider including a picture of yourself (maybe in the field) so that someone who reads your poster and wants to meet you to learn more can easily find you.