Guidelines for Developing and Distributing Presentations

• Your presentation(s) will be made available on this site for downloading by University of Florida/IFAS personnel on the main campus, at UF/IFAS research and education centers and at Cooperative Extension Service offices within Florida who possess a valid UFAD username and password.

• Presentations that you provide here may be downloaded for the use of the personnel mentioned above. They are not meant for distribution to other individuals or organizations, to include the general public, unless you state otherwise and/or make it available on your own on another UF Web site. Only authors have the right to distribute or to allow distribution of their own presentations to individuals outside UF/IFAS. Not even the Webmaster of this site has that right.

• While developing your presentation try to remember that importing large images increases (the number of KBs or MBs) the size of your presentation (even if you then downsize them on the screen), requiring a longer time for downloading. Try to size your images to the physical dimensions you wish to display on the screen before importing them into the presentation. There are a number of simple graphic software packages that will do this for you.

• Please remember that when your presentation is downloaded by others, you are not. By this I mean that you will not be there to explain a stand-alone image or chart on the screen when it is used elsewhere in the state. Please provide an explanation of what appears on the screen. If you do not wish to clutter up the screen with text, or if there is not enough room on the screen for your remarks, then consider providing a script file in Word or Adobe Acrobat PDF format as some other authors have done. Another means to convey your thoughts is the use of the Notes feature of PowerPoint.

• You should reword statements that may require that they are spoken in a certain tone of voice. For example, one presentation on this site originally had a tongue-in-cheek statement that made it appear as if a pest was beneficial to the environment. Ask yourself if the person giving your presentation will be able to convey the "concept" properly to his or her audience?

• Please provide an opening screen that contains at least the title of the presentation and the names of the authors. Providing the affiliation of the author(s) is also a good idea.

• Also include a final screen that provides the credits, instead of simply ending the presentation with the last information screen. The credit screen should provide the name(s) of the author(s), source of photographs (UF/IFAS, other universities, etc.), department or center, as well as UF/IFAS or UF. It is also a good idea to add "Copyright (year) University of Florida" as in Copyright 2006 University of Florida.

• More on copyrights... Even though the Federal Copyright Act of 1976 states that you do not have to add a copyright statement or symbol to a work to show that it is copyrighted, a lot of otherwise intelligent people still do not believe that. I cannot tell you how many people I have spoken to who believe that anything done by university employees is in the public domain. Although your presentation on this site can only be accessed by UF/IFAS personnel, I cannot control what happens to your presentation or to whom it is given or "loaned out to" after it is downloaded. Placing a copyright statement on your presentation alerts well-meaning users that modifying your presentation to showcase their products to reflect their opinions might not be a good idea.

• More on copyrights II... Ensure that you have the right to use all images in your presentation. Using photographs from other universities might not be a serious problem as educational institutions usually grant the right to use photographs for educational purposes by other educational institutions. However, it is still a good idea to request permission, and you should certainly credit the other educational institution on the final credit screen. When you do ask for permission, make sure that the person who gives it to you (or not) has the authority to do so.For more information on copyrights regarding electronic media, see the Copyright Website.

• After your presentation is posted here, feel free to edit it and submit it again and again if necessary. If it is a replacement for a presentation currently on this site, please let me know that and also which one it replaces.

• To post your presentation here, first contact me (Jennifer Gillett-Kaufman) and determine if it is best to send it to me via CD-ROM (very large files) or by e-mail (smaller files). Please include the category where it should be placed.