Presenting papers at scientific and academic events can be a challenge for both participants and organizers.
As an event organizer, you need to handle the planning of presentations.
You need to determine, for example, the day, time, and location of each presentation, plus check logistics like how many people fit in the room.
It’s also the organization’s job to create a schedule with all this information for participants.
That’s a lot, right?
For participants, presentations tend to be the trickiest part of the scientific journey. Many need to learn how to deal with nervousness when presenting and struggle to put together an appealing presentation or a quality poster.
In this article, we’ve gathered 5 practices that will help you simplify the planning of presentations at your event.
5 Tips for Organizing Paper Presentations at Events
After the paper evaluation period ends, the process of planning presentations begins.
So you need to gather the approved scientific papers and choose which ones will be presented at your event.
This is when you start building your event’s scientific program. To do this, it’s important to pay attention to 6 factors. Here they are:
1. Set Presentation Times
What’s the best time slot for presentations? What’s the ideal duration for each one? How many people fit in the room?
That’s right, choosing the best time slots for paper presentations at events isn’t easy!
To set presentation times, you need to know how many rooms will be available and for how long.
Based on that information, you can determine the maximum duration of each presentation. Think of a way to fit every presentation into the event’s schedule.
Example: The event has 10 papers to be presented. If you only have one room, available for just 4 hours (240 minutes), then each paper should have a maximum duration of 10 minutes.
Tip: Always leave some buffer time for switching presenters and setting up presentation materials, like laptops and USB drives.
To set the time for each presentation, it’s important to think about the type of paper the participant will present.
You need to pay close attention so you don’t set a time that’s too short or too long, since that hurts the quality of the presentations.
This task needs to be done very carefully! You should think about the types of papers being presented and know how to manage rooms so the presentation environment feels pleasant.
With this information in hand, you’ll be able to determine how many papers can be presented per day and manage the intervals between them.
2. Manage Participant Expectations
You should try to accommodate participants’ needs as much as possible — after all, without them, your event wouldn’t exist!
So try to adapt presentation times based on the availability of paper authors.
It’s important to remember that you can’t please everyone.
The ideal approach is to offer 2 presentation shifts and leave some open slots in the schedule for possible participant rescheduling.
Once again, we have to stress that announcing the schedule in advance is essential so participants can plan ahead better!
3. Choosing the Location
It’s very important to set a limit on presentations per room so the event flows smoothly!
For poster presentations, think about how many participants will occupy the same space. Be careful not to let the space get too crowded, which would make the experience uncomfortable for both participants and the audience.
For oral presentations, choose auditoriums based on the number of participants, so they’re neither too empty nor overcrowded.
4. Managing Spreadsheets
After setting the times and locations for each paper and each presentation’s duration, you need to systematize this organization.
Many organizers use spreadsheets to organize paper presentations at events.
With them, you can easily find papers, rooms, and authors for each presentation.
5. Use an Event Platform
Now, the golden tip: choose to use an event management platform to automate all this work and make paper presentations much more practical!
A spreadsheet can work, but it’s extremely labor-intensive.
Logging all the logistics of the scientific program is a task that demands a lot of manual work and time from your team, which makes it prone to errors.
Imagine if, on the day of the event, two presentations were scheduled for the same day and location? So be very careful!
With an event system, you won’t have that problem.
On Even3, you can organize your scientific program while avoiding these scheduling conflicts.
The system itself can notify you when two presentations are scheduled for the same time and location.
So, no more mix-ups, right?
