Preparing Your Presentation - Before the Conference

Presentation and Handout Guidelines

 TMA will make digital resources and handouts available to attendees through the virtual event. If you would like to make slides, handouts, or other resource documents available to accompany your presentation, please send those documents by email or large file drop to your coordinator no later than Friday, April 8, 2022. Contact your coordinator with any questions or concerns.

TMA is restricted from copying journal articles without written permission from the publisher. If you plan to include journal articles in full as part of your presentation materials, it is your responsibility to obtain a copyright release. 

Presentation Guidelines
All live presentations on April 29 and 30 are scheduled for 45 minutes each. Please check your timing and delivery to ensure that your presentation does not exceed this time limit. We recommend a presentation time of 35-40 minutes to allow 5-10 minutes for audience questions. Audience questions may come from attendees in the meeting room as well as from attendees participating virtually.

On-demand presentations must be a minimum of 30 minutes in order to qualify for CME, and we recommend a maximum of no more than 60 minutes.

Speaker Materials 

  • PowerPoint Presentation (Due April 8). Why do we need it before the conference? All presentations will be reviewed to ensure content is free from commercial bias, and our team also needs time to upload presentations/handouts (with permission) to the virtual event. 
    • If your presentation is larger than 20MB, please do not send it by email. Instead, upload the file to TMA's Large File Server.
    •  Download the TMA PowerPoint template to make creating your presentation easy. 
    •  Create Great PowerPoints. Check out this short PDF for tips and tricks to make the most of your presentation.
    • Remember that some attendees will be viewing slides on a computer screen, or possibly a smaller tablet screen.
     
  • Handouts (Due April 8). Attendees find these materials beneficial. Handouts may be answers to some frequently asked or anticipated questions or a simple outline of the topics you discuss with citations. Or it could be a statement of why you chose this topic and how participants can use this information to improve their practice. Make sure to design them so attendees can take notes.   
    • Remember that handouts are a reflection of your presentation. You should be sure they are well-designed, readable, and topic-related. 
    • If your handouts are a summary and/or copy of your slides, let the attendees know so they are not preoccupied with note taking. 

Pre-Recording Tips

For those recorded presentations that will be available on demand during the event, TMA staff are available to assist with recording sessions via Zoom with an advance appointment. Contact your CME coordinator with questions or to schedule a recording session. If you intend to record on your own, please keep these tips in mind.

  • Lighting is important. A ring light or other lighting from the front will help eliminate shadows on your face. Avoid filming in front of or with your back to a window.
  • Smile and take a beat at the beginning of the recording, and again when you are finished. These pauses allow our video editor plenty of clean footage to edit both the beginning and end of the video.
  • Make sure you look at the camera lens. This will give you the best connection with the viewing audience.
  • Consider a wired or wireless microphone headset. This will capture consistent sound as you record, even as you move around.
  • Send your video in mp4 or wmv format, with your name and presentation title as the file name. Because it will likely be a large file, please use the Large File Server to send the video to TMA. The maximum file size is 1000MB. 

Last Updated On

February 09, 2022

Originally Published On

January 12, 2011