At the conference, we announced the winners of the best presentations awards for the Fast Forward Session and the Poster Reception. The list of winners is given below.

Fast Forward Poster Preview Session: Winner: Defining Edges on a Round Earth Michael Kallay, Microsoft Corporation Runners-up: Linear Feature Extraction Using Perceptual Grouping and Graph-Cuts Charalambos Poullis, University of Southern California; Suya You, University of Southern California; Ulrich Neumann, University of Southern California Topological Maps from Signals Yuri Dabaghian, University of California at San Francisco; Anthony Cohn, University of Leeds; Loren Frank, University of California at San Francisco

Poster Reception: Winner: Optimal Route Selection with Route Planners: Results of a Desktop Usability Study Hartwig Hochmair, University of Florida Runners-up: TS2-tree - an Efficient Similarity Based Organization for Trajectory Data Petko Bakalov, University of California at Riverside; Eamonn Keogh, University of California at Riverside; Vassilis Tsotras, University of California at Riverside Topological Maps from Signals Yuri Dabaghian, University of California at San Francisco; Anthony Cohn, University of Leeds; Loren Frank, University of California at San Francisco

Hope to see you all at the ACM GIS 2008 Conference!

This year, we are organizing a new event called the "Fast Forward Poster Preview Session". This session will feature presentations from the authors of the poster papers, who will be given two minutes to explain the highlights of their work. The Fast Forward Poster Preview Session will be held on Wednesday, Nov 7 between 14:50-15:50, with the main Poster Reception occurring later in the day, between 19:00-21:30. There has been considerable interest regarding this session and we hope to make it a success with your kind cooperation.

As you can see, the Fast Forward Poster Preview Session is timed to last exactly one hour. After discounting the first two minutes for the perfunctory introductions, the authors of the poster papers shall each have two minutes to present their work. In this section, we will provide you some information regarding the preview session and also to give you some information regarding the presentation material (slides) for this session which should be prepared by you and mailed to us in advance. In order to make this session a success, we urge you to send them to us before October 15, 2007. Below, we give some instructions that you should follow when preparing your presentation.

Please make your slides "self running" and timed so that they last EXACTLY TWO MINUTES. The title slide should be allocated a minimum of 10 seconds, so that you have enough time to walk to the podium (and also for the preceding presenting author to leave the podium). Please divide the remaining time (one minute and fifty seconds) between the content slides.

An example presentation can be found here. You are welcome to make use of it as you see fit. You may also find useful the following brief article on preparing a self-running Powerpoint presentation:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/HA010348171033.aspx

Please note that while you may prepare the slides using Star Office, Open Office or other alternatives, you must save them in Powerpoint (PPT) format before sending them to me. If you need help preparing in any of these packages, please send us an email.

DEADLINE:

Please email the slides to Jagan Sankaranarayanan <jagan at umiacs.umd.edu> before October 15, 2007.

After we have received the presentations from all the authors, we will put together a master slide set containing all the 29 poster papers. This presentation shall be "self running" and will last 58 minutes. Please note that this means you will not have any control over the progression of the slides, which will occur entirely automatically. So, please rehearse and set the transition times accordingly.

At least a week before the conference, we will post the order in which the authors will present their slides.

In this section, we will provide you with some information about the Poster Reception which will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2007 between 19:00-21:30.

The Poster Reception is a good opportunity for authors to present papers and meet with interested attendees for in-depth technical discussions. In addition, attendees find the poster sessions a good way to sample many papers in parallel sessions. Thus it is important that you display your message clearly and noticeably to attract people who might have an interest in your paper.

Your poster should cover the key points of your work. It need not, and should not, attempt to include all the details; you can describe them in person to people who are interested. The ideal poster is designed to attract attention, provide a brief overview of your work, and initiate discussion. Carefully and completely prepare your poster well in advance of the conference. Try tacking up the poster before you leave for the conference to see what it will look like and to make sure that you have all of the necessary pieces. Most importantly, DO NOT take your printed text from the proceedings and make a poster that consists of the actual text of the paper. This is a BAD idea and will reflect badly on you in the eyes of the conference attendees who view your poster.

The recommended size for your poster is (landscape orientation) 30 inches (width) x 24 inches (height). For your poster, we would provide you with a slightly larger board in landscape orientation. Push tacks will be provided at the conference to mount your poster on to the board.

The title of your poster should appear at the top in CAPITAL letters about 25mm high. Below the title put the author(s)' name(s) and affiliation(s). The flow of your poster should be from the top left to the bottom right. Use arrows to lead your viewer through the poster. Use color for highlighting and to make your poster more attractive. Use pictures, diagrams, cartoons, figures, etc., rather than text wherever possible. Try to state your main result in 6 lines or less, in lettering about 15mm high so that people can read the poster from a distance. The smallest text on your poster should be at least 9mm high, and the important points should be in a larger size. Use a sans-serif font (such as "cmss" in the Computer Modern family or the "Helvetica" PostScript font) to make the print easier to read from a distance.

Make your poster as self-explanatory as possible. This will save your efforts for technical discussions. You may bring additional battery-operated audio or visual aids to enhance your presentation.

In order to help you interact with the people who view your poster, you should prepare a short oral presentation of about 5 or 10 minutes that you can periodically give to those assembled around your poster throughout the 2.5 hour poster session. If possible, more than one author should attend the session to aid in presentations and discussions, and to provide the presenters with the chance to rest or briefly view other posters.

1. Making Poster Presentations
http://home.okstate.edu/homepages.nsf/toc/PFFmakeposter

2. How to Make a Poster Using PowerPoint
http://www.tltc.ttu.edu/posters/How_to_Make_a_Poster_Using_PowerPoint.pdf

Good luck and looking forward to meeting you all in Seattle.

1. Isabel Cruz (Chair), University of Illinois at Chicago
2. Kentaro Toyama, Microsoft Research India
3. Craig Knoblock, USC/ISI
4. Mohamed Mokbel, University of Minnesota
5. Mehdi Sharifzadeh, Google Inc
6. Frantisek Brabec, Roam Secure Inc

1. Michael Gertz (Chair), University of California, Davis
2. Randolph Franklin, RPI
3. Michael Worboys, University of Maine
4. Omar Boucelma, Université Aix-Marseille
5. Ouri Wolfson, University of Illinois at Chicago
6. Carl Smythe, Microsoft