CERFers On The Run

CERFers On The Run is an informal running club that gets together to run and exercise throughout the cities that the CERF Biennial Conference visits. This year, the CERFers On The Run will be meeting from 6:15 AM to 7:15 AM before the oral sessions start, Monday through Thursday.

Each day, there will be two different group runs, consisting of a long (about 3 miles) and short (about 1 mile) run. We will meet in the courtyard of the Renaissance Mobile Riverview Plaza Hotel at 6:15 AM and do 10-15 minutes of stretching before starting the run. Everyone will receive a ticket for each day they participate to enter to win a running-inspired gift basket! 

All of the runs include landmarks throughout Mobile, consisting of Mobile historical landmarks and sites. Other routes will include popular downtown locations to explore during conference downtime.

Check out the running routes below, get stretched out, and let's go for a run! 

1-Mile Run	3-Mile Run
1-Mile Run	3-Mile Run

Family Friendliness at CERF 2019

CERF 2019 has been working hard to improve on our past success in being a family-friendly conference, making the conference easier to navigate for nursing mothers and others with growing children. Here are a few examples of the plans to assist this group of attendees. 

• We will have a special room set up for pumping breast milk with amenities that only a pumping mother can truly appreciate, like a fridge with divided storage, and important supplies.
• The Family Friendliness Committee has identified a local Mom's Day Out facility -Sunshine Sue's Playgarden - that offers drop-in care. The facility is open Monday-Friday from 8:00 am - 3:00 pm, cost is $50/child and the facility is located 6 miles from the Convention Center. They accept children 8 months - 6 years old. Please mention you are a member of CERF when making your reservation. We strongly suggest you contact them ahead of time to ensure there is space available. Advanced, pre-paid reservations are required.
  
  You can also check with your hotel concierge for other childcare suggestions.
  
  
• We are working on discounts for some of Mobile’s area attractions, suggestions of kid-friendly restaurants near the conference, and a map with nearby parks so you can get out and burn off that conference energy.
• Please note: Children are welcome at conference sessions/workshops, in the exhibit hall, poster sessions, and receptions (Sunday through Thursday evenings) provided they are accompanied at all times by registered adult attendees. Please keep in mind that alcohol will be served at evening events. Parents are asked to show consideration to the presenters and other attendees by being proactive to avoid disruptions of the scientific program.  

If you have any questions or suggestions to improve your experience as a parent at CERF, please contact Dottie Byron ([email protected]).

* CERF has undertaken reasonable efforts to provide references to an appropriate childcare resource; however, parents should conduct proper due diligence in choosing a service for their children. CERF is providing this reference without endorsement, representation or warranty of any kind. Parents shall assume all responsibility for their research and selection of childcare facilities for their children. In no event shall CERF, or its directors, officers, or employees, be held liable for any losses, injury, damages, or any other consequences resulting from, or arising in connection with the use of, or reliance on, these childcare resources.

Oral Presentation Guidelines

Oral presentations are a central component of CERF conferences and provide participants with a valuable opportunity to share their research and network. Please read these instructions carefully to help ensure your presentation is a success. 

Specifications

Computer Equipment
The computers in the meeting rooms will be PCs with Windows 7 or Windows 10, Office 2013 Standard, Acrobat Reader, Adobe Flash, and Apple QuickTime. Personal laptops cannot be used in the session rooms. All presentations will be uploaded from the Speaker Presentation Room (106B) to the meeting room laptops that have been provided for your use. However, support is available for any last-minute revisions to your presentation. Please see details below.

Creating Your Presentation
All presentations must be created in, or converted to, Microsoft PowerPoint. Presentations in the concurrent oral session rooms will use the 4:3 format. Plenary and Keynote presentations will be presented in 16:9 format.

Acceptable formats** for presentations: PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps, or .pptx); Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) Flash (.swf).

Video & Audio Files
The recommended video format for Windows-based presentations is Windows Media (.wmv).

Image files are embedded directly into PowerPoint when the file is saved, while video and audio files are not. Only a link is made to those files. Copy your video and audio clips into the same folder as your presentation PowerPoint file. This will eliminate the problem of PowerPoint losing the link to the file. Follow this same procedure with any fonts that might not be installed on the meeting room laptops.

**Macintosh Users
Please make sure that all inserted pictures are either JPEG or PNG file-types. Quicktime (.mov) files are also an accepted video format. Presenters using Macintosh’s Keynote program should consult Apple technical documentation for directions on converting their presentation to PowerPoint. This conversion should be completed prior to transmission to a meeting room PC laptop.

Fonts
Arial and Helvetica are recommended for clarity and compatibility. Use a font size of at least 24 points for body text and 36–40 points for headings. Light colored text on a dark background is advised. Avoid using red or green. Recommended maximum number of lines in text slides is no more than 6 or 7.

Images
The size of the screen will be 1024 x 768 pixels, meaning that any image with more pixels in the X or Y coordinate that is more than that will not be displayed. The image will be altered by PowerPoint to fit. Large images (i.e. 2000 x 1500 pixels) which are created with digital cameras and scanners will make the resulting PowerPoint file very large. This may cause the presentation to load slowly. This can be avoided by inserting images with the following properties:

1. For on-screen presentations, JPEG-type images work well. This type of image file can be created with virtually all imaging programs.
2. Using a graphics program:
3. Change the size of the image to approximately 800 x 600 pixels
4. Save as file type (.jpeg).
5. Select compression setting of 8 (High quality image)
6. Insert all images into PowerPoint as (.jpeg) files. If you copy the images to the clipboard and then Edit/Paste them into PowerPoint, the images will not be compressed and the PowerPoint file can become very large. To avoid this, insert them directly into PowerPoint (Insert/Picture/from File).

Animations
Use animations only if they are absolutely necessary to convey a particular message.

Submissions Process for Presentation Files

Advance Submission
Presenters are strongly encouraged to submit presentations in advance via Confex, no later than 28 October. All presenters will receive an email message several weeks prior to the conference with instructions for submitting their presentations.

Note: Due to the early start of the workshops on 3 November, it is important for workshop presenters to submit their presentations by the 28 October deadline.

On-site Submission and Review/Editing
The Speaker Presentation Room (106B) will be open:

Sunday, 3 November, from 12:00 pm – 5:00 pm (EST).
Monday, 4 November, through Wednesday, 8 November, from 7:00 am – 5:00 pm (EST).
Thursday, 7 November, 7:00 am – 3:00 pm (EST).

Check-in the day before your session if possible to preview your presentation and no later than 4 hours prior to the start of your session. Technicians will be on hand to help preview and/or edit your presentation as necessary.

If possible, your most current presentation should be saved on a flash drive and brought to the Speaker Presentation Room (106B). Please do not bring your personal laptop to the Speaker Presentation Room (106B) as the process of retrieving your presentation from it will be prohibitively time-consuming.

You may edit your presentation up to 4 hours prior to the session start time. When you are finished reviewing and/or making changes to your presentation, you must tell the PowerPoint technicians that you’ve viewed and approved your presentation. It will then be saved to the technician’s computer and transmitted to your meeting room laptop where it will be easily located on the desktop.

Quality Control
Giving your presentation a last “once-over” is the most important step you will take to ensure your success. When reviewing your presentation, make sure all fonts, images, and animations appear as expected and that all audio or video clips are working properly. The computers in the meeting rooms use the identical software as those in the Speaker Presentation Room (106B), therefore: IF THE PRESENTATION DOES NOT PLAY PROPERLY IN THE SPEAKER PRESENTATION ROOM (106B), IT WILL NOT PLAY PROPERLY IN THE MEETING ROOM.

Security
Cameras and video equipment are not permitted in the Speaker Presentation Room (106B). All files are automatically deleted from the meeting room laptops at the conclusion of each day.

What to Expect During Your Presentation 

Your session room laptop will have your presentation clearly viewable on the desktop. Simply double-click your presentation and control it from the podium using the computer mouse or the up/down/right/left keys on a keyboard. A PowerPoint remote/laser pointer will also be included in each room.

Roaming Audio/Visual technicians will be located in close proximity to all meeting rooms and will be available to provide assistance if required. A student worker will also be assigned to each meeting room and can help track down an AV technician.

Each presenter will be given 12 minutes to present traditional oral presentations, followed by a 3-minute question and answer period. For those presenting an Ignite-style lightning talk, you will have 5 minutes to present. Further tips and guidelines are available for lightning talks.

Educating Everyone At CERF 2019

There will be four dedicated education/outreach sessions at CERF 2019. In addition, for the first time, we will provide a dedicated space for attendees to share their best-practices, great ideas, lesson plans, etc. with all meeting attendees.

This should be especially appealing for folks who might have conflicts with the sessions. We hope everyone will share materials and, to that end, we will have poster boards and tables for materials/links/flyers.

You can drop off your materials whenever is convenient and visit often to see everyone else’s great ideas! The potential for new collaborations is huge. Look for the banner at the conference: Educating Everyone at CERF!