2008 Annual Meeting presentations available online

Perhaps while attending the SEG Annual Meeting you have felt frustrated when two technical sessions of high value to you were scheduled at the same time.

SEG has created a solution. The Society is making more than half of the oral-session presentation files from the 2008 SEG Annual Meeting in Las Vegas available online. The 300+ files are mostly PowerPoint and PDFs, some augmented with video. These files are available for download alongside the expanded abstracts with which they are associated.

This unique feature gives SEG Digital Library patrons more of the technical-session experience than expanded abstracts alone can provide.

“This addition to SEG’s online content gives member and institutional subscribers a richer experience of the technical exchange that took place at the Annual Meeting,” said Ted Bakamjian, SEG Director, Publications. “By using the multimedia capabilities of our digital publications archive in this way, we aim to strengthen the important role our meeting plays in fostering innovation.”

Multimedia files are essential for journal papers, meaning they are a part of the paper, usually as an expansion of a figure. Multimedia with expanded abstracts is considered ancillary. Although expanded abstracts are filtered through review conducted by the Technical Program Committee, the presentation files do not undergo such a review.

Corresponding authors for the expanded abstracts chose, on a voluntary basis, to transfer copyright to their presentation files when submitting their expanded abstract files online. Published files are the same as those submitted for projection at last year’s conference.

SEG recognizes that some speakers present sensitive or proprietary content in their oral presentations. This is why author participation in the expanded abstracts multimedia program is voluntary. The online transfer of rights was new in 2008, so SEG gave corresponding authors two opportunities to rescind transfers of copyright in the presentation files before publishing the files online.

SEG Technical Program Online system includes presentation file copyright transfer again in 2009, enabling SEG to publish multimedia files from this year’s meeting in Houston, scheduled for 25-30 October, with registration opening 8 July.

Here is how to access 2008 presentation files within the SEG Technical Program Expanded Abstracts archive:

• Go to the SEG Digital Library (or click Expanded Abstracts in the Publications drop-down menu).
• Click on Volume 27 (2008).
• Click on a section title to access expanded abstracts in that section, or click “View All” to obtain links to all expanded abstracts published in this year.
• Click on the “Abstract” link next to any expanded abstract that has a multicolored “Multimedia” symbol.
• Under the Multimedia tab, click on “View Zip.”
• Follow your browser’s instructions to download, open, or save the file. The file name is built from the DOI (digital object identifier), and the file size is noted alongside the link.
• Decompress the file (unzip) it onto your computer.

Inside the extracted folder, you will find the presentation file or files along with a ReadMe containing an end-user license and SEG’s copyright notice.

SEG thinks this feature will enhance knowledge exchange for both meeting attendees and SEG Digital Library patrons.