Important

• Poster walls will be prepared only for those abstracts of which the first author will have confirmed her/his attendance by registering before April 8, 2002. If you are not able to present your poster, you are kindly requested to contact the organising office immediately and to notify them of any change of presenter or withdrawal.
   
• Posters of authors not registered by April 8, 2002, may only be mounted in the "Late Poster Area".

Schedule

• Posters will be on display from Saturday May 25 (15.00 hrs) to Tuesday, May 28, 2002, (14.00 hrs)
   
• Poster mounting will be possible on: Saturday, May 25, 2002, from 12.00 - 15.00 hrs
   
• Removal will be possible on: Tuesday, May 28, 2002, from 15.00 hrs - 16.00 hrs
   
• You will find your poster board number in the final programme, that you will receive at the registration desk.

Presence at Posters

In order to enable discussion and interaction with other participants, we request you or one of your group to be at your poster board between:

• 11.00 and 12.00 hrs on Sunday May 26 for posters with odd numbers
  (e.g. P1, P3 - this refers to your final poster board number - not the abstract control number!)
   
  or
   
• 11.00 and 12.00 hrs on Monday May 27 for posters with even numbers
  (e.g. P2, P4 - this refers to your final poster board number not the abstract control number!)

 If this is not possible, please leave a note on your poster board detailing the times when you will be present at the board.

Format

• The usable surface on the poster board will be 90 cm width x 130 cm height (approx. 35 x 51 inches).
   
• Adhesive material will be made available. Only sticky tape (no pins) can be used to mount posters.
   
• Please leave a space of approximately 20 cm (w) x 10 cm (h) in the upper left corner for the poster number.

General Information

• Adding your passport photograph may facilitate contacts during the congress.
   
• The lettering of the poster heading should be at least 2.5 cm high. Detailed information should be provided in a smaller type, but remember that your text must be easily readable from distances of at least 1 meter.
   
• As you know, an effective poster should in fact be self-explanatory.

2. Oral Presentations

Important

• If you are not able to present your talk, it is essential that you contact the organising office immediately to notify them of any change of presenter or withdrawal.

Speaking Time

The chairpersons of your session will be strict in allowing no more than the time allotted to your paper. Remember to allow some time for the changeover of speakers and chairperson's introduction, and for questions and discussion.

• For 30 minute slots (in the symposia) we suggest 25 minutes maximum speaking time
   
• For 15 minute slots (concurrent sessions) a maximum of 11 minutes speaking time.
   
• For 10 minute slots (certain concurrent sessions) allow a maximum of 7 minutes speaking time; less if you expect lively discussion.
   

Please rehearse your talk to make sure it will fit comfortably into the available time.

Make yourself known to the chairpersons and/or the room assistant in your session room before the beginning of the session.

Projection and Technical Setting

• All rooms will be equipped with single slide-, data- and overhead projection.
   
• If you are using slides (single projection only!), please load and view your slides in the slide preview room preferably in the morning of the day your talk is scheduled, but not later than 2 hours in advance.
   
• If you are using data projection, it is essential that you load and view your presentation in the slide preview room preferably in the morning of the day your talk is scheduled, but not later than 3 hours in advance.
   
• The lecture rooms are exclusively equipped with Windows-PCs (no Macintosh machines). You will not be able to use your own laptop or notebook.
   
• Please bring a CD-ROM, ZIP- or floppy disk all formatted for Windows® (PC). You may want to carry a second disk as a back-up and/or set of slides in case there is any insoluble technical problem.
   
• File Format: Microsoft® Power Point™ presentation formatted for Windows® (PC) only.
   
• Maximum Resolution: XGA (1024 x 768 pixel)

General Information

Like all of us, you will have sat through many conference talks, some good and some bad. We have all been to talks which failed to communicate their message because the speaker spoke impossibly fast, perhaps in a very indistinct way, or flashed through large numbers of slides so crammed with detail that nobody could follow them. So please:

• Remember that most of the audience are not native English speakers - speak clearly (whether or not English is your native tongue) and not too fast
   
• Plan an average of no more than 1 slide per minute, in most cases
   
• Keep your slides or Powerpoints simple. In text slides, use no more than seven lines per slide, with ample space between the lines, and no more than seven words per line in suitably large lettering
   
• Leave sufficient space between the text and the edge of the slide/screen. Some data projectors may not display the very border of the slide/presentation.
   
• Geneticists have no excuse to forget that one male in 12 is red-green colour blind.

Workshops

If you would like to contribute to one of the workshops mentioned above, please contact the organiser in advance:
W1 and W4: Syndrome Identification: Robin Winter and Dian Donnai
W2: Mutation Screening: Mireille Claustres
W3: Cytogenetic problems: Niels Tommerup and Orsetta Zuffardi
W5: SNPs in Multifactorial Disease: Francoise Clerget-Darpoux
W6: Prenatal diagnosis: Celia Delozier
W7: Quality control in Molecular Diagnosis: David Barton and Els Dequeker

Late-Breaking Research

Contributions are welcome for the plenary session featuring important research completed after the abstract deadline of January 21st 2002. The results should be expected to have a major impact on the development of the field in which they were obtained and should not be a simple "late submission".

A covering letter explaining the importance of the research should accompany the abstract. Both must be submitted, preferably by email, before April 15th 2002 to the Chair of the Scientific Programme Committee, Prof Andrew Read (Department of Medical Genetics, St Mary's Hospital, Manchester M13 0JH, UK; tel +44 161 276 6601, fax +44 161 276 6606; email Andrew.Read@man.ac.uk). Submitted abstracts will be reviewed by the SPC.