Information for Presenting Authors

95^th ESA Annual Meeting
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
August 1 - 6, 2010

A. Guidelines for All Oral Presentations
B. Guidelines for All Poster Presentations
C. Corrections
D. Cancellations
E. Penalties and Fees for Cancellations/No-Shows

A. Guidelines for All Oral Presentations

GUIDELINES FOR ALL ORAL PRESENTATIONS

• All speakers should plan on arriving at the room in which their talks are scheduled 15-20 minutes before the start of the session. A student A/V volunteer will be present to help load everyone’s presentations on the laptop in the room before the session begins.
• Speakers for Contributed Oral Presentations are allowed 15 minutes for presentations.
• A 5 minute period between talks allows for questions, discussion, and introduction of the next speaker. This 5 minute period belongs to the audience, not to the speaker, and is managed by the session presider. Time limits will be strictly enforced by session presiders.
• Speaker-ready rooms are available in order to test out your presentation on our laptops and projectors. Please sign up for a slot in a speaker-ready room at the Information Desk near Registration.
• In the event of a cancellation between now and the conference, or unforeseen circumstances that delay your arrival on site in time for your session, please notify Jennifer Riem jennifer@esa.org by email as soon as possible.

Important Information Concerning All Oral Presentations:

• Microsoft PowerPoint and Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0 are the only acceptable audiovisual formats for electronic presentation for oral papers.
• Each meeting room will be equipped with a dedicated LCD projector and PC laptop configured with DVD/CDRW combo roms, 3 USB ports and will be running Windows XP Pro with MS Office XP Suite and Adobe Acrobat 6.0. It is your responsibility to make sure that your presentation will run under this system. Newer versions of PowerPoint files may not work – save your files in a format compatible with MS Office 2000 for Windows 2000, or with Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 or 9!
• Corel presentations are NOT supported. Embedded animation or graphics are NOT supported. MAC format is NOT supported.
• Please do NOT bring your own laptop for your presentation. If you created your presentation on a MAC and confirmed that your presentation does NOT work in one of the speaker-ready rooms available at the Annual Meeting, you may connect your MAC to the LCD projector IF you bring your own VGA dongle. ESA will not provide these adapters.
• All presenters will be expected to contact their session presider or projectionist at least 20 minutes in advance of the start of their session to pre-load their presentations onto the dedicated laptop.
• Acceptable media: CDs, Flash drives. You will need to ensure that these are compatible with our laptops – which will have CD readers and USB 2 ports.

B. Guidelines for all Poster Presentations

• Posters should be hung as early as possible on the day during which the author’s presentation is scheduled. Even though the exhibit hall does not open until 11:30 AM on Monday – Thursday, presenters will be able to enter in order to hang posters as early as 7:00 AM.
• Poster sessions are Monday – Thursday from 4:30-6:30 PM, and Friday from 8:30-10:30 AM. Please note that the evening poster sessions start 30 minutes earlier than in previous years! Presenting authors are required to be present for the scheduled 2 hour period when their poster is being displayed.
• Organized poster sessions are new this year. There are 1-2 of these sessions per day and will be numbered OPS 1-20 on specially marked boards.
• Please remove your poster when the poster session has ended. All posters left in the exhibit hall after 6:30 PM will be thrown away.
• Posters must be hung on their assigned boards. If you hang your poster somewhere else, you risk being marked as a no-show! Boards for contributed posters are numbered from 1-180, and the assigned board number for each poster is listed after the session number in the program. For example, PS 43-165 should be placed on board #165; PS 2-17 should be placed on board #17. OPS numbers will be separate on specially marked boards numbered 1-20. For example, OPS 1-5 should be placed on board #OPS 5.
• Poster boards are approximately 2.4 m wide x 1.2 m tall (8 ft wide x 4 feet tall) and there will be 1 poster per poster board.  A poster does not have to take up the maximum amount of space provided.  Since these dimensions are not precise, presenters should design posters to be at least 5 cm (2 inches) smaller on each margin.  Pushpins will be supplied, and are the only method for attaching the poster to the board.
• Poster presenters may not use audio-visual equipment but are welcome to bring along handouts associated with their presentation.

 C. Making Corrections

• You may view your abstract by searching the final online program.
• Any important but minor changes can be made to the online program and print addendum by contacting Jennifer Riem jennifer@esa.org.

D. Cancellations

• If circumstances prevent attendance for a scheduled presentation, the author should try to find a substitute presenter to make the presentation.
• If cancellation is unavoidable, the author should notify Jennifer Riem as soon as possible. 
• The deadline for cancellation without penalty was May 1, 2010.  

E. Penalties and Fees for Cancellations/No-Shows

If you will not be able to make your presentation, please email Jennifer Riem (jennifer@esa.org) as soon as possible. Please try to arrange a substitute speaker if possible. Substitutes do not need to be approved by ESA but we appreciate being notified of the change so that we know who to contact about the presentation. If you must notify us of a cancellation at the conference, please also use email. Other kinds of messages may not reach the right staff person.

Late cancellations and failures to give scheduled presentations are disruptive and leave costly gaps in the program that are distracting to all attendees. Therefore, ESA has adopted the following cancellation policy and fee schedule (all values are in US dollars):

• Each person who submits an abstract, whether for an oral paper or a poster, MUST also provide payment information (credit card or check) to ESA. No abstract submission will be accepted for presentation unless this payment information is received by ESA.
• Payment information will be used to process late cancellation/no show fees ONLY if the presenter either: 1) fails to submit written notification of abstract withdrawal to Jennifer Riem prior to the May 1, 2010 cancellation deadline or, 2) fails to show up to present his/her paper or poster and does not arrange for a co-author or other alternate person to present the abstract. All fees will be processed after August 6, 2010.
• $60.00 US Dollars will be charged for late cancellation/no show oral presentations.
• $40.00 US Dollars will be charged for late cancellation/no show poster presentations.
• Presenters who cancel after May 15, 2010 will not be allowed to give a presentation at the 2011 ESA Meeting.
• Presenters who fail to appear for a scheduled presentation and who do not give any prior notice to ESA, will not be allowed to give a presentation at the 2011 and 2012 ESA Meetings.
• Exceptions: Cancellation fees and penalties may be waived if special circumstances apply. Consideration will be case by case. While it is imperative that you notify ESA of your cancellation as soon as possible, decisions regarding waiver requests will not be made until after the annual meeting.  

For further information, consult the ESA web page (www.esa.org/pittsburgh) or contact the Program Chair, Frank Gilliam, or the Program Assistant, Jennifer Riem.

Dr. Frank S. Gilliam Department of Biological Sciences Marshall University Huntington, WV  25755-2510 E-mail:  gilliam@marshall.edu Phone:  (304) 696-3636 FAX:(304) 696-3243

Jennifer Riem Program Assistant Ecological Society of America 1990 M Street, NW, Suite 700 Washington, DC 20036 USA Phone: (202) 833-8773 x 218 Fax: (202) 833-8775 Email: