American Fisheries Society
Alaska Chapter
The Alaska Chapter of the American Fisheries Society is a professional organization of individuals interested in maintaining high standards for the fisheries profession and ensuring conservation of Alaska's fisheries. This web site is a source of current information regarding the Alaska Chapter and its activities.

****NOTE THAT All participants are required to pay the conference registration fee (See the pre-registration form)****

Time allotment for papers; presentation tips. Unless special arrangements have been made each presenter is given 20 minutes:

• 2 minutes for session chair to introduce the presenter and the presenter to prepare her/his A-V;
• 15 minutes are for the presentation; and,
• 3 minutes are for Q&A.

During your 15-minute presentation, the session chair will give you signals at the following time intervals to help you stay on schedule:

• 10 minutes into your talk,
• 13 minutes into your talk;
• 14 minutes, your session chair will stand; and,
• 15 minutes you will be cut off at 15 min.

Please practice your presentation and adjust as necessary to remain within time limits. Experience has shown that it is impossible to clearly present a single double-spaced page (reading word for word) in less than 2 1/2 minutes. This means that the reading version of your presentation should run no more than 6 double-spaced pages.

Audio-visual equipment. Each concurrent and plenary meeting room will be equipped with the following A-V equipment: one 35-mm slide projector, one overhead projector, a laser pointer, a house microphone, a Multimedia projector (MMP), and a screen (dimension: either 8x8 or 10x10). If you have need for any additional equipment (e.g., a second slide projector, high-intensity overheads, etc.) you must supply it.

• Slides and overheads. If you have a lot of slides or overheads, the reading version of your presentation should be even shorter than that recommended above. Allow a minimum of 20 seconds for each slide or overhead to be up on the screen. Please DO NOT use 140-slide carousels--they are highly prone to jamming. Make sure your slides are extra-sharp with good edge-to-edge resolution. They should not be crammed with detail. Each slide or overhead should try to make a single point--no more. The watchword is: if you want to really communicate with your audience, focus on two or three key concepts and drive them home forcefully. That's all you'll have time for.
  
• PowerPoint presentations. The following considerations apply.
  
• Presenters will need to bring their presentation on their laptop AND ON a CD or a Memory Stick (e.g., USB drive). Presentations should be compatible with Microsoft POWERPOINT 2000 or 2003.
• All presentations for a session will be loaded onto a single laptop that is already hooked up to and set to operate with the projector in the room. These presentations must be loaded prior to the session either the evening before or during breaks.
• Because the configurations of equipment vary so much, there is absolutely no guarantee that your presentation will work with the particular MMP projector assigned to your meeting room. Experience shows that MMP to computer incompatibility can be a real problem. Because of this, it is imperative that you test out your presentation with the MMP you will be using BEFORE YOUR SESSION BEGINS, such as during the break or free time immediately proceeding. Because different MMPs may get moved between rooms, the time to do your dry run is immediately before your session so you are ensured of working with the exact same MMP. We will try to have people around to help troubleshoot any difficulties that emerge during this dry run, but sessions themselves cannot be delayed in order to fix problems that arise therein. Therefore...
• YOU MUST COME PREPARED WITH A BACK-UP VERSION OF YOUR VISUALS, formatted either as overheads or slides. Please remember that session chairs cannot delay the schedule if an MMP fails or proves incompatible during a session.
• In planning your presentation, follow the tips given above for slides and overheads.
  
  
• Other Audio-Video formats. All presenters who plan to use alternative audio-video formats other than those noted above (slides, overheads, or PowerPoint presentations) must make arrangements and  receive approval prior to the conference from each session chair AND THE CONFERENCE CHAIR (Bert Lewis, bert.lewis@alaska.gov). The following additional considerations apply:
  
• The various video file formats (e.g., AVI, MPG, WMV, ASF, MOV, etc.) may or may not be compatible with the common laptop for each presentation room, and as such prior approval/arrangements MUST be made to ensure that your video will be compatible. Video file(s) should be stored on a CD or USB memory stick so that the file(s) can be loaded on the common laptop prior to the session either the evening before or during breaks.
• DVD playback capability will not be possible on the common laptop to be provided. Accordingly, presenters desiring to use DVD video playback as part of their presentation will have to provide a DVD player with standard audio-video outputs for input to the Multimedia Projector (MMP) in each presentation room..
• VHS audio/video playback will similarly require that presenter provide their own playback equipment with standard audio-video outputs for the MMP

Punctuality.  Some sessions may be concurrent. Therefore, it is important to keep on schedule to allow the audience the opportunity to attend specific presentations. One presentations that runs past its allotted time will throw off the entire schedule thus preventing presenters from presenting their work and making the program schedule ineffective for the audience. Our instructions to session chairs, emphasize the importance of keeping to the schedule, but the only way to ensure punctuality is through your cooperative effort. Please respect your audience and your fellow presenters! Stay within your allotted time. We will obtain a system of synchronized clocks showing the "official conference time." The aim is to make sure everyone in the room knows what time it is, speaker and session chair included. Keep in mind that session chairs are instructed to cut off overlong presentations. PLEASE RUN THROUGH YOUR PRESENTATION BEFOREHAND AND TIME IT! Modify if necessary.