Call for elevator pitches

The format

Elevator pitches run in a dedicated plenary slot in front of the whole congress. Each presenter gets three minutes and a single slide. A visible timer runs, and the microphone is cut at three minutes — this is not a negotiation, and it is the same for everyone.

The constraint is the point. Three minutes is enough to land one idea properly and not enough to hedge. Pitches consistently reach more delegates than parallel sessions do, because everybody is in the room.

What makes a good pitch

• One idea. A programme, a method, a finding, a partnership model. Not a summary of your organisation's work.
• Open with the point. No literature review, no institutional history. Say what you did and what changed in the first thirty seconds.
• Make the ask. Finish by saying what you want from the room — partners, replication, data, funding, criticism.
• One slide, few words. An image and a headline beats a table. Nobody can read a table in three minutes.
• Rehearse aloud, with a timer. Three minutes is around 400 spoken words. Most first drafts are twice that.

Who should submit

Anyone. Elevator pitches are deliberately open to early-career researchers, community practitioners, volunteers and small organisations who would not normally get plenary time. Delegates who have already submitted a paper or poster abstract may also submit a pitch, provided the pitch covers different ground.

Submission and selection

Pitches are submitted through the same system as abstracts, marked as an elevator pitch submission. You provide a title, a 150-word description and the single idea you intend to land. Selection is made by the Programme Committee on the strength of the idea and the clarity of the description, and the number of slots is limited by the length of the plenary session.

Your final slide is submitted by a deadline given in your acceptance letter. Slides submitted late cannot be loaded — there is no facility to connect your own laptop during a rapid-fire session.