Lisa Reed, Dept. Entomology, Cook College, Rutgers University, NJ USA

  For the American Mosquito Control Association/New Jersey Mosquito Control Association Joint Meeting in Atlantic City, NJ March 2000, I was asked to run the audio-visual portion of the program.  This was the first time that LCD projectors with laptop presentations was to be used to a large extent in conjunction with slides and overheads.  I agreed to do this, not realizing what I was getting myself into.  The meeting is now over, and it ran pretty smoothly.  A number of people asked me about what goes into organizing the AV and so I thought I would put my thoughts down about the Do's and Don'ts while it is still fresh in my mind (or what's left of it).  This page primarily targets PowerPoint presentations from a laptop through an LCD projector but also covers such items as rentals from the hotel/convention center.

  First - the scenario.  The AMCA/NJMCA meeting was attended by 900 - 1000 people from around the world.  The meetings began with a Plenary session for all to attend, and at most, four concurrent sessions were run.  The Plenary Session began on Monday morning and the last session was finished by Friday morning.  A special session was set up to translate presentations between Spanish and English, requiring a translation booth, headphones, and a translator.  Gary Clark coordinated that session while I provided the remaining AV, with Fred Beams doing the physical slides.  The meeting was held at Ballys Park Place, which has accommodations for holding large meetings.

  Roughly 193 papers were presented.  At least 50 papers were laptop presentations (26%).  Not bad for the first time at these meetings and clearly the trend is set.  

  So, now someone asks you to do the same.  Before you buy Maalox in bulk or say goodbye to your hair, read below.  If you have any suggestions, email them to me at lreed@rci.rutgers.edu and perhaps I will someday update this page and include them.

  First you need to know what type of presentations your group normally uses.  For AMCA/NJMCA, it was primarily slides with an occasional overhead or VCR presentation.  Ask previous attendees what they saw if you don't know (this was my first AMCA meeting - I'm an ornithologist and didn't know).  Then create a "typical setup" list.  Our list, to be in place for each session plus the plenary, included the following:

  Redundancy - The use of two slide projectors made it possible to easily switch from one projector to the other should a light bulb burn out or a slide get seriously stuck.  When talks are as short as 10 minutes, you cannot afford the time to search for another slide projector.  Since slides were the primary type of presentation, we opted for two projectors to be available.  As it turned out, we cut many of the second slide projectors for monetary reasons.  We did have backups for projectors, laptops, LCD projectors, and the overheads, but did not have them at each session.  Fortunately we had only a couple of slides get stuck, and Fred Beams had shown us how to rescue errant slides and thus they were quickly remedied.

  Room Setup - Slide projectors and LCD projectors have different arrangement requirements.  Slide projectors should be placed at the back of the room on a projector table while LCD projectors should be placed toward the front of the room.  We used 12 x 12 foot screens for the larger rooms, placed on a podium, with the lectern to the front and side of the screen.  The screen was generally placed in the center of the wall, but we have also had it placed angled from a corner to good effect.  The lectern should be placed at an angle to the screen so the presenter can see their slides easily without turning too far away from the microphone (and thus losing his/her audience).  A laser pointer (the cheap small kind on a key ring worked just fine) was placed at the lectern, attached to the microphone cord with a cord to prevent it from walking away.  The LCD projector was placed on a cocktail table with the laptop, and the mouse was placed on the lectern using 2 6-foot mouse extenders.  The remote for the slide projector was also placed at the lectern.

  Remember:  Depending on the place, you may need to have an electrical strip at the front to supply power to the LCD projector and laptop.  This may also mean using an extension cord.  For all cords and extensions (including the mouse extensions), remember to use wide tape (duct tape) to place over the cords so that people do not trip over them and pull your expensive equipment off the table.  Ballys provided this service automatically.

  The first and foremost scheduled item to declare and defend is the DEADLINE FOR POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS.  This is so important that it should be declared loudly and often to all who may even think about giving a paper at the meeting.  You must publicly state that you will NOT ACCEPT ANY presentations that are not emailed to you by such and such a date.  Give a time of day (mine was High Noon on Wednesday, 8 March 2000, with my leaving for the meeting on Friday evening that started on Sunday).  By shouting it loudly and often enough, people may actually believe you and get their presentations to you by the deadline.  You don't want to accept presentations during the meeting because you will be so busy, and the chances for screwing up are too high.  (Now, undoubtedly you will accept late presentations, but let's keep that a secret for the time being.) When the call-for-papers goes out, make sure you include this deadline in the registration packet, repeated several times over in a large font.  Be hard and fast about this deadline - this is critical to the smooth running of the program and the maintenance of your sanity. By doing so, you've added 10 years to your life.  For more on THE DEADLINE and dealing with PowerPoint presentations, see below. 

  Check with convention services at the hotel/convention center/university as to when they need a list of items to be rented from them.  For the AMCA/NJMCA meeting, we began planning about 9 months before the actual meeting.  We toured the site to become familiar with the rooms, how many people they could hold, and what the likely setup would be.  Fortunately we were familiar with Ballys, having used it for previous NJMCA meetings. 

  About 4 months before the meeting, I began a list of items I thought necessary for the various sessions.  By that time, I had begun to hear what other people needed.  I made an Excel spreadsheet, listing the items by date and session.  My original spreadsheet was somewhat different but I found out at the last minute that Ballys needed it in a format something like this (moral - find out early what the rental/hotel/university place wants):

  At some time (perhaps a month to just a few weeks) before the meeting, you will have to give this list to the hotel/convention center/university coordinator so they can make arrangements to have the rental items available and in the session rooms before the start time of the session.  Make sure you and the coordinator understand what everyone is to do - who sets up the equipment, especially if you are bringing in your own AV equipment, who breaks down the setup, who do you call when you need something, who in your group is authorized to order equipment and where will you find the equipment that you accidentally left behind.

  Notifying People about Laptop Presentations - To do laptop presentations efficiently, you must have them in your possession prior to the beginning of the meeting.  This way you can organize them into folders and place them onto the laptops used at the meeting in such a way as to minimize confusion for all volunteers.  Set the deadline for laptop presentations to be in your computer early and broadcast this information loudly and often. Make sure you mention that you will NOT be accepting presentations after this date (again, a ploy, but a necessary one).  Make sure this information is in the registration packet as well as on the official website for the meeting.  It is probably a good idea to set a beginning time from when you'll accept presentations (perhaps one month from the deadline) in case some serious Type A personality tries to send you their presentation in January for a June meeting.   Below is what we put out for the AMCA convention:

  Email Requirements - Now you sit back and wait for the presentations to come pouring in.  Presumably they will be emailed to you.  Note that in the above announcement, however, I mentioned something about mail server restrictions.  Most servers have a limitation on how much space is available for email - 5, 10 or 20 MB being the most typical amount allocated to individuals.  If you go over this (i.e., you fill up your inbox), a number of things can happen.  Generally, you might be able to email out, but you can't receive anything.  The email you have waiting in your inbox might not be downloadable to your PC.  It might be damaged.  You may be sending messages out to all who are trying to email you that the server is rejecting their email (no place to put it).  So, how can you avoid this?

  The solution is two-fold:  Keep your inbox empty so that it can accept incoming messages and have an inbox large enough to accept most messages.  To keep mail from accumulating in your inbox, set you automatic mail checker close to the minimum amount acceptable by you network administrator (here at Cook College, we will get an error message if we check for mail less than 5 minutes apart from the previous time).  By checking your mail frequently, you'll keep the inbox clear for larger messages that could potentially overflow and cause problems. You can also make sure your inbox is large enough.  If you have only a 5 MB inbox, ask your administrator for a temporary increase in the size of the inbox.  Ask for 20 MB, and the chances are good that you'll get it.  If your inbox cannot be increased in size, ask if there is a work around, such as a forwarding program that will bounce email to a folder in your account area.  Since this folder can be of any size (you may have to ask for a temporary increase in your account size, of say 100MB), this can accept the larger presentations.  Email is then bounced from your inbox to this folder automatically, and you retrieve the email from the folder through an FTP connection.  Your inbox remains empty, and you can download the emails less frequently that with the former method.

  Another solution that I haven't tried is to have a site to which participants can FTP their presentations.  Personally, I think this is asking for more problems than it's worth.  Most participants will know how to send an email with attachment, but few will know what FTP means, much less how to do it.  

  Saving the Presentations - The easiest way I found to save the presentations was to write to a writeable CD after I had organized them into folders representing the sessions.  In each session folder I placed the appropriate presentation plus session title slides and other announcement slides I had hoped to use.  Then, just prior to my leaving for the meeting, I wrote the CD.  The entire meeting folder was then placed onto all laptops used for the meeting.  This way, if I had to switch laptops between sessions, I would have the presentations already on the new laptop.  Altogether we had about 225 MB of presentation.  Zip drives are another option, but the drive must be available on all laptops.

  The Latecomers - What to do about latecomers is a personal choice, but inevitably there will come a day when someone waits beyond the deadline, and the AV coordinator will say "Sorry. I cannot accept it, and I will not accept it at the meeting."  I suspect that day is not far off given that we had more than 25% of our presentations as laptop presentations for the first time and the complexity of this issue will only grow as more people use laptop presentations.  Being a wuss, I didn't have the guts to say no, and so I begrudgingly told the few people that begged that I would accept their presentations from Wednesday Noon (original deadline) to Friday at 6 (I actually left at 10 pm, but 6 was the last time I checked my email.  Okay, so it was closer to 9 pm.)  By the time I left, I had 47 presentations (I had previously expected only about 25), and I was given 8 more at the meeting (and perhaps a few snuck by me while I was running between sessions).   The ones given to me at the meeting without prior arrangements being made were the hardest to handle since they are asking for your time and you find you have so little of it.  You probably don't have a laptop on you when they grab your arm.  Maybe you're running between sessions making sure everything is working smoothly and that the projectionists have no questions.  Perhaps you want to eat dinner (maybe the first meal you've had for the day) or take a shower or sneak a nap or prepare for your own presentation.  They hand you a floppy, or a cd and there you are, trapped like a deer in headlights. You have 30 things on your mind and suddenly this becomes number 1.  They hand you a zip disk and you don't have a zip drive.  (Fortunately for us, someone in the crowd had a portable zip drive that we were able to use.)  But you know you have to accommodate them because their talk is the next day.  I think it is important to tell them how much this is a problem, but then do everything you can to get their presentation on and to let them relax.  They've then learned what a potential problem being late can be and will be ready for the next meeting and you're just happy that you've kept from pulling out what little hair you have left.

  I guess one needs to be flexible while people learn the system.  I've thought about what is the best solution and quite frankly I 'm not really sure what will work with latecomers.  Perhaps one solution is to have a desktop available in the registration area where participants can download their program.  It can have a CD and ZIP/JAZ drive, a 3.5 and 5.25 floppy and a folder to which people save their files.  On the monitor must be a note saying that presentations will be taken off at the end of the day to be placed on the appropriate laptop by the following morning.  Unfortunately I think this just allows the lazy to remain lazy and inconsiderate and perhaps a hard approach is the best.

  One thing:  I felt far more forgiving toward those that had modifications they wanted to do or make as long as I already had their presentation.  I don't know why. 

  Timing of the Setup - I found that each setup for a session takes about 20-30 minutes.  This includes the placement of the slide projector, remote, laptop, LCD projector, mouse with extenders, lectern setup, clock, and laser pointer. Ballys did the slide projector and lectern setup, while we did the laptop and LCD projector, mouse, clock and laser pointer. The setup finished with the first slide of the first talk up and ready to go.  Each AV projectionist was given a list of the current talks, marked to indicate if they were laptop presentations or not.  So, give yourself plenty of time if you are running multiple sessions.

  Handling Physical Slides - Fred Beams had a terrific way of handling the use of slides that I had not encountered before.  Presenters were to give him their slides in a preview room where he placed them in a carousel and labeled them with the presenters name, date of session, and time of presentation.  Then the carousels were taken over to the room a few minutes prior to the running of the session.  Carousels were taken back at the end of the session and the participants picked their slides up in the preview room.  This system eased a considerable amount of pressure on both myself and the people running the session's AV.   Fred was able to ferry late slides into the appropriate session and he kept a running tab on which presentations were accounted for (including laptop information from me) and which he did not (nor ever) get.  This way, everyone at the session knew whether the next presentation was a laptop presentation, a physical slide presentation, overheads, or no visuals at all. Participants could always go to the preview room and go through their slides to their hearts content prior to giving their talk (there were several caramate projectors and a couple of slide projectors available).  It was a very smooth, efficient system that I recommend to all meetings of a moderate to large size.

  One thing to consider is the confidentiality of the material given to you.  Much of it has not been published and some of it may be proprietary material.  Assure your participants that you will delete all materials from all laptops after the meeting is finished.

  Train Your Volunteers - The day before the meeting starts, you should probably have a training session with your volunteers to go over exactly how the laptop and LCD projectors work.  I had all four setups prepared in the preview room when the training session began.  The volunteers could see how things were hooked up.  Then I showed them how to shut down, and take apart the setups.  Then I had them put them together from scratch.  From this, we all learned that we would plug in the LCD projector and turn it on.  Plug the monitor cord into the LCD projector.  Plug in and turn on the laptop without connecting it to LCD projector.  After it is up and running, connect the monitor cable to the back of the laptop.  This prevents the laptop from trying to load a monitor driver during startup.  We've found fewer complications this way, and the newer LCD projectors don't seem to notice to whom they are attached.

  Mark your setup - You might want to mark each setup with tape to distinguish the pieces.  Mark each cable, monitor cable, extension, laser, etc.  This helps during the breakdown of the sessions in tracking where all the parts are.  Don't forget to mark the lens cap to the LCD projectors.

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  Ta-da.