Suggestions for improving Colloquium Streaming efficiency:
Our goal is to have the Colloquium on the Web prior to the weekend following the talk.

PRE-EVENT:
The host and the presenter should be aware of our intent to stream the presentation and the requirements that are put upon them to make this happen.

The presentation room of choice is 1 West. We have built (or are building) capabilities into that room to make streaming the presentations as efficient as possible.

If possible, present your talk in PowerPoint. We can accept PDF and sometimes PostScript.

Ultimately what will be displayed on the web is sequentially numbered GIF or JPEG files that represent the presentation.

PDFs, and especially PostScript files, are erratic in their ability to reproduce across platforms, particularly if the creator did not embed special fonts into the file. This is often the case when the presenter constructs complex equations. There have been some cases where PowerPoint presentations also included unique fonts on the presenter's systems, that were not available to us.

Use a landscape orientation; especially if you are presenting electronically using a data projector. You will maximize screen usage that way, as all data projectors are landscape oriented devices.

If possible, provide a copy of the presentation materials to Visual Media Services (VMS) well before your presentation. We have FTP services available, or if the user has access to the FNAL domain, we have convenient Drop Boxes on our NT server for just such use.

THE DAY OF THE EVENT:
(For the host, have your guest stop by VMS before you go to lunch, if possible.)

Provide a copy of the PowerPoint presentation to Visual Media Services at least 3 hours prior to your talk, if you have not done so already.

If you must use transparencies, they should be submitted to VMS prior to the talk. We can make color copies of them and get them back into the presenter's hands with a short turnaround. The copies give us good source material for scanning.

If you must use transparencies, we strongly recommend using a single overhead for your talk. There are few, if any, reasons to use two overheads. When streaming, we will condense a two overhead talk to a single overhead talk.

If the transparencies are not submitted prior to the talk, then the Host should have the responsibility of obtaining the materials, with a return address, and submitting them to Visual Media Services. Visual Media Services can, in most cases, send the originals back to the presenter within a day.

Ideally, the talk should be either all landscape or all portrait format. We can accommodate a mixture of orientations.

Use large fonts. Typewritten or hand-written pages are less legible.

If you are using transparencies, try not to do "builds" with them (often times a presenter will lay new information over an existing graph, for example.) This significantly adds to our production time, as we must recreate the builds from the materials submitted.

Recommendations

If possible, try to hold questions until the end. In most cases, we will have a microphone for the questioner(s). The web audience will not hear the question posed to you if the questioner does not have a mic. If the question is not "mic'ed" it would be very helpful if you repeated the question.

It is also very helpful if you run through your PowerPoint in the order the presentation was created, and avoid stepping forward or backward randomly through your presentation.

We hope these suggestions help you to have a pleasant experience getting your presentation posted on the web!