Audiovisual Equipment at the MESA Annual Meeting

With the cost of audiovisual equipment rental for MESA's annual meeting approaching $25,000 annually, MESA calls upon meeting participants to carefully consider their audiovisual equipment needs. Please request only the equipment you will use. MESA's board endeavors to provide the equipment that will make your presentation possible, but must do so within financial reason. MESA can provide the following equipment upon request, without a surcharge to the user:

• Slide projector
• Double slide projectors (for comparing images)
• Standard overhead projector (for use with transparencies)
• 27" TV and VCR or DVD player
• CD or cassette player

LCD Projectors and PowerPoint Presentations

Unless you are giving a multi-media presentation, do not plan on using PowerPoint. The use of PowerPoint for a standard paper presentation, where the presenter shows talking points, or something equally innocuous, adds nothing to and even distracts from the presentation. The audience should be focused on the presenter, listening to the talk, not looking at a trendy PowerPoint design that draws the attention away from what is being said. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule: art history and architecture panels that heavily rely on visuals, panels including computer demonstrations of language modules, and any presentation that relies upon multi-media tools; these work well in PowerPoint. For everything else: if you want to do a PowerPoint presentation that requires the rental of an LCD projector, please expect to have to pay half of the $500+/day rental fee.

MESA's annual meetings are held in hotels or convention centers and we must pay for every piece of AV equipment that is used. The panel rooms do not include any audiovisual equipment. You must request it in advance and we must order it.