Poster and Presentation Guidelines

Congratulations on your acceptance to FSNNA 2024! Whether it’s your first time presenting — or your umpteenth! — we’re really looking forward to hearing more about your work and spending time together online Oct 17th-20th.

Since shifting our conferences online, our goal has always been to find ways to foster dialogue. Our preference for asynchronous “posters” accompanied by interactive roundtable discussions reflects that. However, posters haven’t always been fully accessible to all conference participants. The FSNNA organizing committee is committed to supporting accessibility and the active accommodation of scholars and fans with diverse access needs. Consequently, while we encourage creativity with submissions, we request that all scholars carefully consider how they design their materials so that they might reach as many fellow researchers as possible.

Below, you can find advice on how you might represent your work (both posters and roundtable talks) in accessible ways. Our suggestions are made in conjunction with Accessibility Advisor Connor Scott-Gardner who kindly consulted with us to review participant feedback from previous FSNNA events. Connor can be on X under the username @ConnorScottG.

To ask any questions or to add further suggestions of your own to this list, please do not hesitate to get in touch with the team at the general FSNNA email: fsnna.conference[at]gmail.com.

Similarly, if you have a more experimental format in mind but cannot find appropriate guidance listed below, please get in touch so that we can ensure that it meets our accessibility requirements.

Thank you all for your care and consideration!

Team FSNNA

What Is a Poster? What Should It Do?

As an online conference that draws scholar and fan attendees from right around the world, posters (or asynchronous materials) are an important part of presenting at FSNNA. They allow viewers to engage with your work before, after and during your timetabled roundtable, and ensure that viewers in different time zones can still learn about your research if they cannot make it to the live session. Your poster will be showcased on the FSNNA Conference Discord channel throughout the length of the conference.

A poster offers opportunities to expand on your roundtable discussion (and does not always need to be presented in traditional ‘one-page’ form; see below), but it should fundamentally ‘work’ on its own in a way that can be understood by somebody who is relatively new to your topic of discussion.

To aid the FSNNA Team in preparing for this year’s conference, we ask that all posters are submitted to us by September 20th. File names should be clearly marked in the following fashion: FullName_PaperTitle. The earlier you can submit your poster, the better; if after review we feel that it may require some accessibility tweaks, we will get in touch to request changes, and would love to give you as much lead time before the conference as possible to make them.

Accepted Poster Formats and Accessibility Considerations

Video

Must be submitted as a unlisted YouTube link.
No longer than 10 minutes of playback time.
Avoid coding information with colors which might be difficult for those with color blindness to differentiate (see this webpage by Vengage for further information).
Minimize the amount of text on screen and keep layout simple.
All text must be in sans-serif font, and a size that does not require the viewer to zoom in.
Closed captioning should accompany any audio voice-overs.
Remove static or invasive background noise as much as possible when recording audio.
A plain text transcript should be included with your submission and any on-screen text should be read out and, as such, included in the transcript.
Avoid any flashing images/lights.

Audio only

Must be submitted as an MP3/Wav file.
No longer than 10 minutes of playback time.
Remove static or invasive background noise as much as possible when recording.
A plain text transcript should be included with submission.

Powerpoint/slides

Must be submitted as a PDF (if working in PowerPoint/Slides, use ‘Save as PDF’). If your presentation incorporates moving elements, you may also submit a second copy in slide format.
Avoid the use of contrasting colors that might be difficult for those with color blindness to differentiate (see this webpage by Vengage for further information).
Use a font size that does not require zooming in.
Minimize the amount of text on each slide and keep the layout simple.
All text must be in sans-serif font.
Provide alt-text for images.
Creating accessible PDFs requires a simple process outlined on the Microsoft webpage linked here.

PDF poster

Must be PDFs; in the interests of file size and easy uploads, we will not accept any other format
Avoid the use of contrasting colors which might be difficult for those with color blindness to differentiate (see this webpage by Vengage for further information)
Use a font size that does not require zooming in
Keep the layout simple and easy to follow
Provide alt-text for images.
Creating accessible PDFs requires a simple process outlined on the Microsoft webpage linked here.

General Notes for All Poster Formats

All images, charts, tables, etc must be accompanied by alt-text. For instructions on how to do this, Microsoft offers some good ‘how-to’ guides on this linked website.
Office 365 software has a built-in “accessibility checker” which can flag areas of improvement in documents, PowerPoints, etc.
Spell out acronyms, define terms, and avoid jargon. Whilst many of us do this naturally, it is important to make sure that concepts which are intrinsic to your study can be understood by those who do not have prior knowledge of the specific fandom/issue.
Spell out words like ‘and’, ‘plus’, and ‘about’. Screen readers can misread text that uses special characters like the plus sign (+) and tilde (~).
Write brief but meaningful link text. Be descriptive—links should make sense without the surrounding text. Any links should be named. Example: “click on the FSNNA website for more info” rather than “click here for more info.”

Additional Accessibility Resources

What Makes a Good Roundtable?

At FSNNA, the main mode of presenting is via roundtables, or sessions where 3-5 participants with thematically-linked areas of study can introduce their work, methods, findings, and discuss emerging themes and issues with one another and the audience.

A good roundtable presentation is one that is clear, succinct and well-timed. We ask for all presenters to plan for their opening talk to be no longer than 5-7 minutes, and for this to be broadly centered around the idea of introducing their work rather than attempting to present a full subject.

As such, be thoughtful of the speed and pacing of your speech. Presenting can be nerve-wracking, but it’s important to remember to breathe! If you’re worried that you might run over, plan to say a little less and remember that your poster is the place for you to present your findings more fully. Question time will also be allocated to allow you to expand on your work and be in dialogue with other speakers.

Discussion and Q&A time is a really important part of each roundtable. Once scheduling for the conference has been confirmed, all presenters will be granted the opportunity to get in contact with their fellow panelists and learn a little more about what they are due to present. On the day of the conference, a chair will be present to field audience questions and manage any technical concerns, but we encourage all panelists to come prepared with any questions or discussion points of their own which they might want to pose to their fellow presenters.

Conferences are a great opportunity for scholars of all career levels to present work that ranges from ideas-in-progress to finished publishable papers. Plan the structure of your roundtable presentation in whatever way feels most appropriate for your work, and do not worry if other presenters take a different approach — variety keeps things interesting! If it is helpful to you to flag your research stage or pre-record certain content for accessibility reasons, we are happy to accommodate this: just get in touch via the FSNNA email address.

As much as possible, plan to be visible onscreen as you present (camera on). This can help viewers who wish to lipread as they follow the discussion.

In the interests of efficient handover and timekeeping, we will not permit participants to share their own screens during roundtable presentations. Remember that the roundtable is meant to be an introduction and thematic discussion; your poster is the best place to expand on more complex visual concepts. If, however, you do feel that a single visual aid (i.e a meme, or single graph) is absolutely essential to the comprehension of your introductory talk, please get in touch with us so that we might discuss the possibility of moderators displaying on your behalf. All participants are also welcome to share additional links in the Discord before, during and after their panel.

Further Notes on All Formats

Spoilers and content/trigger warnings

If your work includes spoilers, please make this clear at the start of your presentation/poster.

If your work contends with difficult or potentially upsetting subjects, please make this clear at the start of your presentation/poster and give timestamps if appropriate. Where possible, avoid graphic imagery or descriptions that are not wholly necessary to the delivery of your work.

FSNNA, Academic Integrity, and Generative AI

Although we recognize that individual departments, organizations, and universities have assumed different stances toward the use of emergent generative AI technologies, such as Chat-GTP and DALL-E, we ask that for the purposes of the FSNNA Conference, you submit and present only work that you yourself have created.

As an organization, we are dedicated to the idea of the FSNNA conference as a space for generative thinking, community building, and intellectual engagement. Beyond a foundational investment in academic integrity, we understand a commitment to presenting only original research and graphics as a way to honor the intellectual generosity of our colleagues who attend and provide feedback. Such a stance also affirms our broader commitments to fair labor practices, ecological justice, and robust research ethics. Without denying the promises and possibilities of future technologies, we recognize that current iterations of generative AI rely on underpaid and invisible labor, particularly in the global South; that they require copious resource extraction in an era of climate catastrophe; and that they profit from the uncompensated and non-consensual theft of creative work, including fan fiction and fan art.

Poster Party!

If any of the above feels overwhelming or new to you, please do not fear! To support presenters before the conference, we will be hosting a ‘poster party’ where you can ask questions, see some ‘best practice’ examples, and generally learn more about conference accessibility.

We will hold this informal meeting via Zoom in early September. At this inaugural (and optional!) Poster Party, conference presenters can stop by to get feedback or ideas, or just to hang out and work on them together!

For those who cannot make this webinar, check back on the FSNNA website home page after the date where a video recording will be available.