49th ASH^® Annual Meeting and Exposition
December 8-11, 2007

Georgia World Congress Center
Atlanta, Georgia

Abstracts | Important Dates | Schedule At-a-Glance | Special Lectures | Special Interest Sessions | Education Program | Education Spotlight Sessions | Scientific Program | Meet-the-Expert Sessions | Oral and Poster Sessions | Trainee Activities and Services | ASH Business Meeting | Social Events | Exposition | Registration | Hotel Accommodations | CME Credits | Attendee Services | Travel | Atlanta | ASH Publications and Meeting Materials | Meeting Rules and Regulations | Speaker Preparation and Conflict of Interest | Friday Satellite Symposia

Speaker Preparation and Conflict of Interest

Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest

ASH is committed to ensuring the integrity of its scientific, educational, and research programs and offering the best continuing medical education in hematology. Disclosure of conflicts of interest helps maintain the integrity of the information presented at ASH meetings. To help support this effort, ASH requires that all annual meeting presenters honor the ASH Conflict-of-Interest Policy. This policy requires disclosure of any financial or other interest that might be construed as resulting in an actual, potential, or apparent conflict.

Additionally, ASH abides by rules formulated by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), which require presenters to disclose possible conflicts both verbally and in writing. As a presenter, this means you must disclose any relevant financial relationships you or your spouse/partner have had within the past 12 months. For this purpose, "relevant financial relationships" are those from which you or your spouse/partner have received or may receive financial benefit and which are related to annual meeting CME content.

By submitting a disclosure, you agree that you have read the ASH Conflict-of-Interest Policy and understand and support its intent. To ensure full disclosure and proper preparation of your presentation, please review the following information according to your presentation format (PowerPoint or poster).

PowerPoint Presentations

CME rules require session chairs and speakers to include conflict-of-interest disclosure slides in their presentations and inform audiences of any conflicts verbally. In addition, ASH requires its faculty to disclose to the audience any discussion of off-label use of a drug or medical device in their presentations. This promotes transparency and understanding in practice. If these requirements are not met, the presentation may be stricken from the program.

When preparing your PowerPoint presentation, be sure to include a disclosure slide immediately following your title slide. If you have nothing to disclose, a statement to that effect ("There are no relevant conflicts of interest to disclose.") should be included on the slide and stated in your presentation. The audiovisual staff in the Speaker Ready Room will monitor each speaker’s presentation to ensure that this ASH policy is followed.

Please download and review ASH's annual meeting disclosure template and sample slides for use in your presentation.

• Disclosure Slide Template
• Sample Slide: Conflicts to Disclose
• Sample Slide: Nothing to Disclose

The following are additional guidelines and recommendations to follow when creating your presentation.

Compliance instructions:

• Movies: We can only accept movies that have been created with standard compression codecs that are in use by Windows. Windows Media Video (WMV) is preferred and has highest compatibility with PowerPoint. However, AVI and MPG are also acceptable.
• It is imperative that you check your movies in the Speaker Ready Room if your presentation contains video files. If you are having any problems with the video files, the audiovisual staff in the Speaker Ready Room can assist you.
• If you have special fonts in your PowerPoint presentation, please embed them when you save your presentation. You can do this by hitting “Save As.”  In the “Save As” box, pull down the drop-down menu entitled, “Tools,” and check “Embed True Type Fonts.” Then, save your presentation as usual.
• Using a Macintosh personal laptop computer: All Macintosh laptop computer users must notify a supervisor in the Speaker Ready Room at least 6 hours prior to their presentation in order to guarantee compatibility with the change in platforms.

Clarity of PowerPoint slides is vital for a successful scientific presentation:

• Be consistent. Using a uniform background color, text size, text color, and font throughout your slides makes it easier for the audience to follow the flow of your ideas. When using PowerPoint, it is a good idea to build your presentation using the slide master, which helps keep your presentation consistent.
• Use color and contrast. Dark backgrounds with light type are easiest to read. The best backgrounds to use are black, blue, and maroon, or gradients of blue to black, gray to black, and magenta to black.  Preferred text colors are white and yellow. Use black drop shadows when using non-black backgrounds in order to help the text stand out from the background.
• Use a maximum of eight or nine images per 10 minutes of oral presentation.
• Leave a blank space (at least the height of a capital letter) between each line of print.
• Sans serif fonts project better and are easier to read.  Examples of sans serif fonts are Arial and Helvetica 18-point font size.
• For legibility, keep words to a minimum. You should have no more than five to eight lines of text with, at most, five to seven words per line. Text should be well-spaced and -sized in 30- to 36-point type for headings and at least 24-point type for body copy.
• Keep custom animations and slide transitions simple and use them sparingly.

Once you have completed your presentation, please save it to a CD-R, DVD-R, or USB Flash Drive (Memory Stick, Jump Drive, etc.).

Once on site at the annual meeting, bring your PowerPoint presentation on a CD-R, DVD-R, or USB Flash Drive (Memory Stick, Jump Drive, etc.) to the Speaker Ready Room. The Speaker Ready Room will be open each day, starting Friday, December 7, from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. An audiovisual consultant will be available to consult with you on any of the guidelines and to make certain your slides are properly identified for your specific session.

Please deliver your presentation to the Speaker Ready Room within the appropriate designated timeframe:

• 24 hours before your presentation if you would like the audiovisual staff to assist you with formatting your presentation to assure clear and readable images
• 6 hours before your presentation if your PowerPoint presentation was prepared on a Macintosh computer
• 6 hours before your presentation if your PowerPoint presentation contains movies or other videos
• 4 hours before your presentation if your PowerPoint presentation is final and requires no modifications

After you are satisfied with your presentation, an audiovisual technician will save it on the Speaker Concierge Presentation Management System Server on the Secure ASH Show Network. Once your presentation is loaded to the server in the Speaker Ready Room, you will not be able to make any changes.

New This Year!
A technician in the session room where you are presenting will retrieve your PowerPoint presentation and have it ready for you when you arrive to the podium. During your presentation:

• The technician will advance your title and disclosure slides to ensure that your disclosure information is displayed for at least 5 seconds as requested by the ASH 2007 Program Committee and the Executive Committee.
• Verbally state any potential disclosures you may have. If you have nothing to disclose, please mention that you have no conflicts.
• After your title and disclosure slides have been advanced, the technician will turn control of the slides over to you, and you will be able to advance your slides at your own pace for the remainder of your presentation.

If you have any questions, please contact Jill Clark, ASH Annual Meeting Manager.

Poster Presentations

To create your poster, you are welcome to use the Call4Posters™ program offered by Marathon Multimedia. ASH has contracted with Marathon to provide this service to authors for a modest fee. Authors may create and format their posters online or upload an already-created poster in PDF or PowerPoint format. Posters are printed as a single sheet (various sizes available) and delivered directly to the annual meeting for on-site pick up or to the author's address if preferred. When preparing your presentation, please adhere to the following guidelines:

• One tack board approximately 4 feet high and 8 feet wide will be provided for you. Please make sure your final poster fits within these dimensions.
• If your presentation has multiple pieces, please be sure to include a title at the top of the tack board. This piece should list the title and author(s) of your presentation. The lettering of your title should be at least 1 1/2 inches or larger.
• Hand-written material should contain heavy lettering approximately 1 inch in size for minor titles (i.e., questions, methods, conclusions, etc.), and all printing should be at least 1/2 inch or larger.
• All illustrations, charts, and written material should be developed beforehand. Remember to keep these materials simple and readable from a distance of at least 3 to 5 feet.
• Do not mount illustrations on thick and heavy poster material because they may be difficult to hold in position on the tack boards.
• First authors must list conflicts of interest for themselves and all co-authors on the bottom of the poster. If an author has nothing to disclose, his or her statement should read, "I have no relevant conflicts of interest to disclose." If none of the authors of the abstract have relevant conflicts of interest to disclose, the statement should read, "There are no relevant conflicts of interest to disclose." You may use the same disclosure information listed for your abstract in the abstract issue of Blood published online in early November.
• Display of commercial/product sales posters is prohibited. Any poster that is deemed to be a commercial advertisement is unacceptable and will be removed from the poster hall.

ASH assigns each tack board with a permanent number. You will receive the number of your designated tack board with your abstract notification letter. Remember, the abstract number is not your tack board number. Even though you will receive your tack board number in advance, once on site at the meeting, you must first check in at the Poster Information Counter outside Hall B3 and B4 in the Georgia World Congress Center before displaying your poster. Push pins for mounting your poster materials will be provided on site.

During and after your poster session:

• One or two authors should be in attendance at each poster during the entire presentation time.
• Do not allow yourself to be monopolized for an inordinate period of time by a single individual.
• You are only permitted to distribute exact copies of your poster or business cards in the Poster Hall; all other types of handouts are forbidden.
• Remove your poster materials from the tack board immediately after the session. Materials remaining after the session will be discarded.

Poster Presentation Schedule

If you have any questions, please contact Jill Clark, ASH Annual Meeting Manager.