FAQ

Audiovisual equipment

Audiovisual (AV) equipment and technical support constitute the single largest expense of the annual meeting. AFS strives to balance the need to support presenters with the need to keep registration rates as low as possible by providing only essential AV services.

AFS provides basic internet in all meeting rooms, and some AV equipment upon request during the proposal process. Those sessions that require additional A/V support should communicate that as part of the proposal submission.

Presenters who wish to show video are advised to bring their video file on their own personal computer or storage device to ensure there are no disruptions during media streaming.

Presenters may request data projectors and/or speakers when they submit their proposals; all requests will be considered but are not guaranteed. AFS will schedule panels in meeting rooms that are equipped accordingly. All presenters must bring their own computers, and Mac users should bring the appropriate adapters for their particular model. If you are participating in an organized session, please inform your chair of your equipment needs as well. Equipment specifications are linked to the current Annual Meeting page or available upon request.

Individuals who can’t bring their own computers are advised to coordinate with other members of their panel to share equipment.

Proposals for the AFS annual meeting must be submitted via this new submission platform, powered by the provider Fourwaves.

When you submit a proposal, a Fourwaves account will automatically be created for you, which gets activated when you click the link in your submission confirmation email.

This Fourwaves account is completely separate from your AFS member account / login, and from all past AFS Annual Meeting Hub logins.

The dashboard provides access to all your events and submissions.

How to access your dashboard

The dashboard is the page you land on when you login to your Fourwaves account.

From anywhere, hover over your profile picture and click Dashboard to come back to it.

Participant Role View

Events will display any event you have participated in as a registrant or a submitter.

Submissions will display any submission.

For full information with screenshots, visit this page.

How to get an email link to activate your Fourwaves account.

Introduction

You need to activate your account in order to login and access your presentation and / or your participant profile.

Your account is created when you submit an abstract, or when you register; an email is sent with a link to activate your Fourwaves account. If you lost this email, you can get a new account activation link by email by going to: https://dashboard.fourwaves.com/forgot-password

Not receiving the email?

If you're not receiving the account activation email, there are two possible reasons:

There are no Fourwaves account associated with the email you're trying to activate.

The email is in your spam/junk folder.

Verify with the event organizers for the right email to use.

How to get an email link to reset the password of your Fourwaves account.

Follow these steps to get a reset password link by email.

Enter your account's email address on this page: https://dashboard.fourwaves.com/forgot-password

Look in your mailbox for your reset password request email.

Click on the link provided in the email to reset your password.

Confirm and submit your new password.

Not receiving the email?

If you're not receiving the account activation email, there are two possible reasons:

There are no Fourwaves account associated with the email you're trying to activate.

The email is in your spam/junk folder.

Verify with the event organizers for the right email to use.

For full information with screenshots, visit this page.

Login to Fourwaves using the email used on the original form.

In your dashboard, select the Participant role and go to the Submissions tab.

Click on a submission. You can use the search bar to locate it easily.

From the side menu on the right, click Edit submission.
You will be redirected to your submission form.
NOTE: You will no longer be able to edit your submission after August 15.

For accompanying screenshots, visit this page.

Your profile should connect to presentations & events in which you are presenting and vice-versa. If it does not, the Annual Meeting team can take a quick look and tell you what we think the error may be, but we cannot edit your profile page. You are the only person who can access it, via your log in.

If you add a url to your profile, do not add the protocol (https://). It is built into the system and duplicating it will create a link failure.

When you enter your presentation data into the Fourwaves website, Fourwaves does NOT take ownership of your data; they are only processing it to:

communicate with you;

operate the platform;

perform some other specific purposes like maintenance and security.

Fourwaves stores the data it is processing in Canada on AWS (Amazon), and everything is encrypted using the best practices in the industry.

Read more about the Fourwaves privacy policy here.

View Tutorial Video 

Download demo PDF: Uploading Materials 

Presenters have the opportunity to add presentation resources to their original submission when they are logged in. If you cannot log in, locate your initial email from Fourwaves with your link to activate or access your account, or email us at annualmeeting@afsnet.org.

For full information, visit this page.

Poster

The poster needs to be:

Image format (jpeg, png, gif or PDF);

Maximum of 100 Mb;

The landscape format is ideal, but the portrait format will work as well.

There are no specific dimensions, but as a matter of comparison, something like 16 x 9 would work.

Note: If you upload a PDF with multiple pages, the first page only will be converted into an image.

The poster will appear full screen in its tab. Buttons will be visible to zoom in and out. You'll be able to scroll through it using the mouse.

Slides (Powerpoint)

The Slides field uses the Microsoft Powerpoint online viewer which accepts:

A Powerpoint format (.ppt, .pptx);

Maximum of 10 Mb;

Can have audio, but this will increase the file size.

How to compress a PowerPoint presentation

If the PowerPoint presentation's size is over 10 Mb, follow Microsoft's support article here to compress it.

The Powerpoint viewer allows participants to go from slides to slides.

Figures

You can add as many figures as needed using the upload section. The format accepted is:

Image format (jpeg, png, or gif);

Maximum of 100 Mb for each figure;

Click the Edit button to change the title and the description.

Video file

You can upload a video file as well. Make sure to respect those specifications:

.mp4 format;

Maximum of 1 Go;

How long is a 1 Go video?

It depends on the resolution:

720p (HD) is ~5 Mb per minute: 3h20 minutes;

480p (SD) is 2 Mb per minute: 8h20 minutes.

Source: https://www.circlehd.com/blog/how-to-calculate-video-file-size

How to record your video

You can use Powerpoint, Zoom, or online tools like Panopto to record a video of your presentation.

How to record a video using Powerpoint.

How to convert your file to .mp4 format

You can use free online video converters like https://cloudconvert.com to convert from any video format to .mp4

How to compress your video if it is over 1Go

You can use free online video compressing tools like https://www.freeconvert.com/video-compressor to compress your video.