Appendix #1: Guidelines for Quality of Materials and Presentations
Submission deadline: February 01, 2013
You have been selected to be a faculty member for ABA TECHSHOW 2013 because of your
overall expertise and stellar reputation for creating and delivering high quality presentations. We,
too, have high expectations for the high quality of TECHSHOW presentations. Programs
presented at ABA TECHSHOW reflect directly upon the ABA and its reputation for presenting
quality educational program. While we do not wish to cramp your individual speaking style,
content, or approach, we request that you adhere to the following guidelines.
Coordination
If you are presenting a program with a co‐presenter, please make sure to coordinate your
presentations to ensure compatibility, and avoid inconsistency and duplication. Co-presenters are
strongly encouraged to work together to prepare a single, cohesive paper.
Further, individual presentations are on learning tracks that are a series of presentations. Often,
presentations on the same track are related to each other so it is important that you look at the
entire track to understand the scope and limitations of your individual presentation. If you have
any questions, please contact your track leader.
Content
It is vital that you review the program description for your session, and deliver materials and a
presentation that covers the topics described in that description. The session descriptions reflect
topics of interest to attendees as determined by the ABA TECHSHOW Board. Attendees select
the sessions they attend and have expectations based on the session descriptions. If you deliver
a presentation that does not conform to the session description, you can be assured that the
evaluations will make that point loud and clear. The ABA TECHSHOW Board takes the
evaluations and comments of attendees seriously.
Unfortunately, we do not have the staff to edit and proofread your material. Please make
sure your material is complete with all graphics already embedded in the document or
presentation. Our content producer will add your material to the conference materials without any
additional substantive editing or proofreading.
Papers, PowerPoint Slides, Equipment and Microphones
ABA TECHSHOW is, of course, a conference intended to showcase the use of technology. Your
audience will be expecting a PowerPoint or similar presentation and you should prepare with this
expectation in mind. We will provide you with a “Showtime Slide” that prominently displays your
session name, speaker names, start/end time and “Next Session in this Room” information. You
are expected to display this slide until you begin your presentation. This slide does not need to be
included in your submitted materials. We will also provide you with templates for your
presentation and written materials which we request that you use for your written materials.
Our standard room setup will include an LCD projector, screen, KVM switch and microphones.
We expect to have a wireless network available for use by all attendees and speakers. Additional
requests for AV equipment cannot be guaranteed and MUST be submitted in your Speaker
Information Packet for consideration. Onsite additions/changes are extremely expensive and are
rarely approved. We expect that you and/or your co‐presenter(s) will provide the laptop
computer(s) needed to run your presentation and any other equipment needed for demonstration
purposes.
Professional Responsibility
It is expected that you will not mention a questionable practice without clearly stating the
applicable ethical guidelines or considerations. If you do not clarify the ethical context of the
practice that you are describing, some in the audience may assume that you (or the ABA and the
ABA Law Practice Management Section) approve of the practice. To avoid any possible
misinterpretation of your remarks, be sure to remind the attendees of their ethical responsibilities.
Nondiscriminatory and Inappropriate Language and Behavior
When preparing written materials and presentations, speakers are expected to be sensitive to the
concerns of all members of the audience in their use of language, hypothetical examples and
anecdotes. For example, routinely assuming that lawyers and judges are male and that
secretaries and legal assistants are female, or portraying any gender or minority group in an
unfavorable light is inappropriate. Speakers must avoid offensive, racist, or sexist remarks.
Please use inclusive language wherever possible.
We encourage speakers to scrutinize both written materials and oral remarks carefully for
stereotypes, language, or other comments that might offend individuals in the audience.
No Selling of Products or Services from the Podium
We ask all speakers to refrain from focusing on one specific commercial product or service,
especially their own, in their presentations. Any "selling from the podium" can create significant
conflict of interest problems and put the ABA in an awkward position, and will guarantee that we
will get complaints from attendees.
The following suggestions will help you avoid difficulties: Competing products should be
identified, and their strengths and weaknesses discussed. Consultants, vendors and
shareholders should disclose any interests, financial or otherwise, they may have in the products
they are discussing. If your session is a product “shootout” or specifically addresses a certain
program, this focus is obviously difficult to avoid, but you still will want to be sensitive to audience
interpretations.
To make it clear how important this issue is to the ABA TECHSHOW Board and how negatively
our audiences react to this practice, “selling from the podium” problems will be grounds for not
inviting a speaker to future ABA TECHSHOWs, regardless of how popular that speaker might be.
Miscellaneous
Many standard procedures at the Hilton Hotel are governed by union rules and requirements.
While some of the limitations you find may surprise you, we expect that you will treat hotel and
show management staff with patience and courtesy. While there is no speaker “dress code,”
speakers
tend
to
dress
at
least
at
the
“professional
casual”
level.
Appendix #2: Formatting Guidelines for Written Materials
Submission Deadline: February 01, 2013
Materials must be formatted as follows:
File format
Your materials must be submitted in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) format. If you have created a paper in
WordPerfect, please convert your paper to MS Word format. We will convert all materials to PDF before
compiling into the conference materials.
Template
You will be provided with a Word (Windows and Mac) template that includes a cover page and a standard
footer. We ask that you use this template.
Large images
If you have large landscape tables, graphs, or images that will not fit within the document, append them to
the end of your document and add annotations in the document instead.
Excel spreadsheets
Append Excel spreadsheets to the end of a document as separate pages at the end of a document. We
will not edit your document by adding references to the spreadsheets. Later versions of Word allow the
user to insert spreadsheets directly into the word processing document.
Fonts
Use sans serif fonts such as Arial or other similar fonts.
Hyperlinks
When including URLs in your materials, please make sure you use the hyperlink tool to create the links.
This allows the links to be maintained in the document during conversion to the PDF format.
Presentations submitted as part of your materials should be formatted as follows:
Slide size
Use the default slide size of 7.5” x 10” landscape.
Cover Slide
Create a cover slide for your presentation with the title, author(s), session numbers and pertinent
information including any copyright statements. (Remember, this is not the Showtime Slide). Do not use
complex gradients in your artwork for purposes of reproduction as it drastically increases the file size and
redraw time. Some background gradients may not be printable when converted to PDF and show up as
solid black on screen. If you create your own PDF files for submission, you will have whatever flexibility
you may need on gradients, images, included files and fonts.
Fonts - See above
Animations, Movies and Sound
Because the PowerPoint slides will be converted to PDF format, we cannot guarantee that any audio,
video, or animations will be included.