NANOG Presentation Guidelines

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. See also the NANOG41 Call for Presentations.

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 anomolies 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)

Slide Format

Company logos must only appear on the first and last slides of your talk. Full-page logos on cover slides are discouraged.
Presenters/authors may retain copyright of their material, granting Merit Network, Inc., a perpetual license at no cost to archive and redistribute the material. Unobtrusive copyright notices may be on any or all slides of the presentation.
A plain white background is recommended. You'll find a sample PPT file HERE and a sample MagicPoint file HERE.
A PDF is recommended rather than the source file for the slides, e.g., a PowerPoint file.
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 must use as least 28-point fonts (larger for titles).

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.

Schedule for Presentations

The following schedule applies to slide submissions for NANOG meetings.

Action	Date Completed Before the Meeting
Abstract/draft slides due	6-7 weeks
Acceptances issued	4 weeks
Revised draft slides due	1.5 weeks
Final slides due for Web site	.5 weeks

Questions?

If you have questions about these guidelines, please send email to nanog-support@nanog.org.