Oral presenter logistics

Communicate the importance of your research and its impact on the physics community utilizing the following guidelines for oral presentations at APS meetings and events.

Presentation tips and slide design

• Presentations that engage an audience, tell a story. If time allows, go beyond the science.
• Rehearsing is essential. Check the length of your presentation and be comfortable with the in room and/or online presentation equipment.
• If presenting remotely, make sure that websites are white listed with your organization and all software, such as Zoom, is up-to-date.

Slide layout standards

In order to provide an accessible attendee experience and share your research to the fullest extent, your slides need to be readable by everyone in the room and possibly online.

• Use a 16:9 aspect ration. Screens are no longer 4:3 and this layout will reduce the impact of your presentation.
• Maintain high contrast: Use dark text on a white or light background for optimal legibility in illuminated rooms.
• Set minimum font sizes: Use text sizes of at least 24 points for body copy and at least 18 points for chart axis labels.
• Choose clean typography: Select standard sans-serif typefaces such as Arial, Calibri, or Helvetica.
• Enhance chart visibility: Ensure graph lines and data markers are at least 2 points thick to prevent them from washing out on dim displays.
• Select distinct, dark colors: Avoid yellow, light green, pastel, or light gray text on light backgrounds. Use bold, high-contrast colors.
• Design for accessibility: Do not rely solely on red and green color combinations to distinguish data sets.

Presentation equipment

The equipment for presenters varies by APS meeting. Please check your author notice or contact the APS meetings team for specific information about equipment available where you are presenting. In general, rooms may be equipped with:

• An LCD projector
• Screen
• A microphone
• Laser pointer

Some APS meetings provide a PC laptop or presentation management system. If your meeting does not or you prefer to use your personal laptop, please bring the following equipment and use these computer settings.

• Connect power and disable power-saving modes.
• Turn off blue-light filters and disable third-party applications such as f.lux.
• Disable HDR on Windows.
• Mirror the display using the projector's native resolution, typically 1920x1080 or 1280x800. Confirm the correct resolution with the audio-visual team and avoid scaled resolution settings.
• Silence notifications and adjust sleep timers.
• Use the default system color profile and turn off custom calibration settings or reading modes.

Equipment Rental

If you require additional equipment, it can be rented through the official APS audiovisual vendor. Contact the APS meetings team to inquire. The cost of additional AV equipment will be the responsibility of the speaker.

Music and film copyrights

Please only include music or film clips as part of your presentation if it is directly relevant to your research.

If your presentation includes music or film clips, please be mindful of copyright laws and only use content that is open source or for which you have the rights to use.

Always get permission from the owner before using the work for anything. Simply crediting the author doesn't get you past copyright infringement, as the author might not be the owner of the copyright.

Music credits in a presentation if you used the performance of a copyrighted song should be written as follows: (Song Title); Written by (songwriters/composers/writer); Performed by (artist); Courtesy of (recording copyright claimant).

Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder for purposes such as criticism, parody, news reporting, research and scholarship, and teaching.