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Guide for Attendees

    General information

    • GECCO 2026 is a FULL HYBRID conference, this means that there will be both ON-SITE (in-person) and ONLINE presentations for regular talks, workshop talks and posters!

    • Please note: While most of the guidelines provided below are universal, there are slight differences in how they apply to regular talks, workshop talks and posters. Moreover, this page is under development, more details will be added soon!

    Guidelines for all attendees

    Guidelines for attending on-site

    • Bring your headphones, microphone, and a laptop computer with you when attending onsite to join our Hybrid App Pheedloop, e.g., during the online poster session, or other online sessions. This is the first year that we are transitioning to a new Hybrid App, more info to come soon!

    Guidelines for attending online

    • Pick a quiet space for giving your presentation or asking questions, to avoid disturbing background noise.
    • Similarly, always use headphones to avoid echoes and parasitic feedback.

    Guidelines for speakers

    • All talks will be delivered via Zoom , utilizing screen sharing from your laptop (if online) or a session room computer (if the talk is given onsite).
    • Onsite speakers should bring their slides to the venue on a USB to upload them to the session room computers. Please arrive at the room 15 minutes before the session start to make the presentation ready in time.
    • In-person posters will be presented in a dedicated poster session, and a similar dedicated ONLINE session will be organized for online poster presenters using the conference Hybrid App

    • All talks should be given live — pre-recorded videos are intended only as a backup, to be used sparingly in the event of serious technical difficulties.
    • If you are an online speaker, you will join the meeting through Zoom. Ensure you are present 15 minutes before the session starts.
    • After checking in to your session, confirm with the session chair that your presentation will be virtual or onsite.
    • If you are an online speaker, enable your camera whenever possible to connect more effectively with your audience and enhance the listeners’ experience. Whenever possible, position your camera at eye level and look directly into the camera when speaking. Try to have an uncluttered background or use built-in functionality to blur your natural background or apply a professional-looking background. You can consider using one of the backgrounds with the GECCO logo prepared by the organizing team.

    Guidelines for preparing your oral presentations

    • The amount of time available for presentations should adhere to the following limits:
      • For conference and long workshop presentations: not longer than 16 minutes (leaving 4 minutes for Q&A).
      • For Hot Off the Press and short workshop presentations: TBA.
      • For any poster presentation (including Late Breaking Abstracts and Competitions): not longer than 5 minutes.
      • For Tutorials: between 60 and 100 minutes.
    • For workshop talks, presentation length may vary; you will receive instructions from the workshop organizers whether presentations are long or short.
    • Make an extra effort to engage the audience and sustain its attention.
    • Focus on conveying the essence of your contribution, leaving out the inessential details. Saying less, but clearly is preferable to rushing through a lot of content.
    • Avoid verbosity on your visual material: prefer short phrases to full sentences, and use no more than 5-6 of them on each slide. Remember that most people are bad at multitasking, which implies they tend to either listen to you or read your slides, but rarely both.
    • Try not to read directly from the slides or notes that you write for yourself, notes are great for practice, but a natural live presentation is so much better, even if not as smooth.
    • If you have equations or result graphs on slides, ensure that you explain them and do not rush through.
    • Do not assume that everyone in the audience knows all the concepts, make a judgement on what needs to be introduced based on the track and session that you are in — a 30 second introduction often saves a lot of frustration for someone less familiar with the topic of your work.
    • Please keep the following in mind that, in online events, the attention span of the audience tends to be shorter than in onsite events — this was one of the motivations for shortening the talks of GECCO — we kindly ask you to make an extra effort to stimulate interactions.
    • Ensure that the font size is readable (without zooming in) even at the HD resolution (1280×720 pixels).

    Guidelines for poster presenters (all, online and onsite)

    • There will be two poster sessions: The first session will run at the same time separately online and in-person (onsite). The second session will run completely in the Hybrid App, with both remote and onsite participants.
    • Observe that some online speakers could not be available for the two sessions due to the timezone. Thus, we encourage you to use the chat associated to each poster for asynchronous communication with the authors of the posters.
    • If you are an onsite participant bring your laptop computer, headphones and microphone (if needed) to join the online session and interact with the remote attendees.
    • Be prepared that some participants will spend 1 minute looking at your poster, others 5 mins and some others 15+ minutes.
    • Instead of trying to include every single detail of the work on the poster, think about the three groups above, and how you can create a poster from which everyone takes home something useful. Spend time on deciding what to exclude from the full paper rather than meticulously including every detail.
    • Remember that the poster is expected to attract attention and spark a discussion, and not to be a replica of the paper.
    • Ensure that the poster clearly presents the key take-home message.
    • Think of what is the best visual way of illustrating this.
    • Use colours that are contrasting.
    • If your paper contains very large tables or result graphs, consider just showing parts of these, or the key information instead of the full detail.
    • You can include a QR code that links to your paper online, so any interested visitor can take a picture and go directly to the paper.

    Technical instructions for posters

    All (onsite and online):

    • Prepare a digital version of your poster. The file should be in PDF format with a maximum size of 9 MB.
    • Vector graphics are encouraged. If you need to use bitmaps, check that the resolution is high enough to appreciate the relevant details.
    • Upload the digital version of the poster using the GECCO submission system.
    • The digital version of the posters will be placed in the Hybrid App by the organizers.
    • You are required to prepare a 5-minute video explaining your poster, which will be made available to the attendees and could also be uploaded to the Vimeo site for further dissemination. Providing a video does not exempt you from presenting your poster at the conference (if you are onsite) or being available for synchronous communication through the Hybrid App chat or videoconferencing tools (if you are online).


    Onsite only:

    • Prepare your physical poster in portrait (vertical) orientation and A0 size.
    • Posters can be placed during the day of the poster session. More details will follow.
    • Posters that have already been printed at home can be carried in a poster tube. However, as an alternative, also think about printing your poster on cloth/canvas, as you can fold it and easily transport it in a suitcase.