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Guidelines for Presenting at a NANOG Meeting

Thank you for your interest in NANOG! If you are proposing a talk for an upcoming meeting, please keep the following in mind as you prepare your presentation. 

What Makes a Good Talk?

  • To increase the chance that your talk will be accepted, we recommend that you:

  • Highlight operational experience, i.e., present a case study.

  • Identify anomalies or counter-intuitive (interesting) aspects of your experience

  • Educate in your area of expertise (so the audience can learn something)

  • Motivate action (so the audience goes out and does something as a result of the talk)

  • Entertain (so the audience stays in the room)

Lightning Talks are strictly limited to 10 minutes and submitting draft slides is appreciated, but not at all required. Final slides must be submitted to nanog-support prior to the last program break before the talks in PPT, PPTX, KEY, or PDF.   

Slide Format

A plain white background is recommended, a yellow background is discouraged. You'll find a sample PPT file here: Download a sample PowerPoint (PPT) file

Please submit source file e.g., a  PowerPoint or Keynote file, especially if the presentation uses animations.  You may submit a PDF copy of slides for publication on the NANOG webpage or NANOG staff will generate one for you.

NANOG attendees frequently point out that some slides are hard to read from the back of the hotel ballroom, where the General Session is held. To be legible, slides should use as least 28-point fonts (larger for titles).

While the Program Committee may not censor content, changes to align with the NANOG Attendance Charter may be suggested.

NANOG Presentation Logo Guidelines

NANOG does not provide a platform for vendor or product promotion, and therefore maintains strict logo guidelines. Nevertheless, the Program Committee recognizes that some logos are required by the speaker’s company or sponsors, and in some cases may serve to enhance the presentation content.

 

Accordingly, the NANOG Program Committee will allow for the following:

  • Promotional logos representing the speaker’s company or organization on the first and last slide

  • Recognition logos (e.g. thanking the speaker’s sponsors, project partners) on only one of the first or last slide

  • Unobtrusive logos and/or copyright notices representing the speaker’s company or organization in the slide footer

  • Unobtrusive logos representing other products, companies, or projects are permitted within the talk where it is applicable to the presentation content, and with the caveat that the Speaker accepts responsibility for obtaining approval to use any and all logos included

 

Using Configuration Examples

We recognize that configuration examples are a useful, and sometimes necessary, means of conveying information. In order to provide the maximum benefit to the largest number of NANOG attendees, we encourage speakers to give examples using the configuration language of more than one vendor. Talks or tutorials that only use a single vendor for configuration examples will not be excluded on that basis, but will receive lower priority than talks that use multi-vendor configuration examples. 

Note that this does not necessarily mean that each example should be replicated in multiple vendors' configuration language. NANOG recognizes and values the contribution that specific configuration examples bring to talks and tutorials, and understands that multi-vendor configuration examples are not always possible for every speaker to use. We ask that every effort be made to use them, though, to increase the value to the NANOG community.  

See: Call for Presentations for Key Dates 

 

More Presentation Tips

You might find these sites useful as you prepare your talk:

Tips on Giving a Talk, by D. Messerschmitt (adapted.)

"The Short Talk," Charles Van Loan

"Tips for Preparing Scientific Presentations," Office of Naval Research

If you have questions about these guidelines, please send email to [email protected]