HoTSoS 2025 Presenter Guidance

  P R E S E N T E R   G U I D A N C E  

The 2025 HotSoS Symposium will be fully virtual. Plenary presentations will be conducted in StreamYard, and multicast to the RingCentral (formerly Hopin) virtual conference platform and the SoS-VO website. Networking and poster sessions will be held on the Gather.town platform.

Please review the guidance below before clicking the links to submit materials. 

Important Dates and Submission Links

  T A L K S  

PLENARY PRESENTATIONS

All plenary presentations will take place in the streaming platform StreamYard. The feed will be multicast to both RingCentral and the SoS-VO website. Attendees in RingCentral will be able to submit questions to the presenter during Q&A sessions. DoD personnel unable to access virtual event platforms through firewalls will be able to watch the feed on the SoS-VO website.

To deliver your talk, you will join the Streamyard backstage greenroom. In the greenroom, you will be able test your a/v settings and slides prior to going live in front of attendees. An organizer will be in the greenroom and in the stage area at all times to get you set up and answer any questions. Once you are ready, an organizer will move you from the greenroom to the main stage.

There is just one Streamyard join link this year for all sessions. The join link can be found from registering for a tech test. We will schedule short tech tests to ensure your a/v settings are correctly configured and to familiarize you with the platform. On the day of your presentation, you should join the StreamYard greenroom 10 minutes before the start of your session. E.g. If you are the second speaker in a session and your talk is at 11:30am and the session starts at 11:00am, we ask that you join at 10:50am. This will allow us to seamlessly transition from speaker to speaker. 

The session moderator will facilitate Q&A at the end of your talk. They will join on screen 1-minute prior to end of your talk. Please be sure to end on time. If you need a reminder prior to the 1-minute warning, we recommend that you set a timer on your phone.

A few important notes:

  • There is a ~15 second delay in audio/video for attendees viewing the feed from RingCentral or the SoS-VO. 
  • Chrome is the preferred browser for StreamYard. Firefox will also work. Other browsers are not compatible.
  • Animations and embedded videos will not work. When your slides are added to the StreamYard feed, they behave like a PDF. If you have videos as part of your presentation, we will need a separate video file.
  • Remember to close any RingCentral tabs when joining StreamYard. This will prevent feedback issues.

Additional guidance for work-in-progress and work-already-published presenters as follows.

Works-in-Progress

Works-in-Progress (WiP) presenters will appear on screen with a discussant for an in-depth 45 minute discussion of your submission. Please be prepared for this discussion, and ensure that an author will be available. As in previous years, manuscripts will be distributed to session attendees who have agreed to keep the material confidential. Attendees are expected to read the manuscript in advance and be prepared for discussing the topic. You may optionally begin the session with a brief presentation, 10 minutes or less, to introduce the work. The presentation portion may be presented in real-time, materials due Friday, March 28th. Speaker bios and photos are due by Friday, March 14th. Submission links are in the Important Dates section above. 

Works-Already-Published

Works-Already-Published talks are scheduled for a total of 25 minutes, including questions and discussion. This means you should plan your talk to be about 20 minutes to allow 5 minutes for Q&A at the end. You are expected to deliver your talk live, materials due Friday, March 28th.  At least one author should join the virtual session to answer questions live on screen. A session moderator will facilitate the Q&A portion of the session. Speaker bios and photos are due by Friday, March 14th. Submission links are in the Important Dates section above. 

  P O S T E R S  

POSTERS

The HotSoS networking and poster/demo sessions will be held on the Gather.town platform. Gather is a 2D world with 8-bit graphics. Participants move their avatar around the symposium space using their keyboard’s arrow keys. The poster and demo materials will be pre-loaded onto virtual poster stands. To interact with the materials, symposium attendees will "walk" up to the poster stand and press the “x” key to enter a full screen viewing. You will be able to interact with attendees while they are viewing the materials. We will make the space available to you in advance of the symposium so you can familiarize yourself and test your settings. 
  
The HotSoS logo, poster, and slide templates can be found on the website here. Poster and demo materials are due Wednesday, March 26th. You are welcome to use the templates but are not required to do so. Please carefully review the guidelines at the link before submitting.