IN-PERSON POSTERS
Physical space available for each poster:
Each poster will be hung on a board that is 2.44 m (8 ft) wide and 1.22 m (4 ft) high, counting the 4 cm (1.5 in) wide frame. The bottom of the board is 0.77 m (30.5 in) high, and the top is 1.99 m (6 ft 6.5 in) high. Consider making a horizontal poster that you hang as high as possible.
Advice on constructing an effective poster:
A poster need not be linear like a talk or a paper. Put the most important information at the top, starting with the title. Below that, include all of the names that have contributed to the poster but emphasize the name(s) of whoever is presenting the poster. Make sure to include the presenters’ names in the way you would like to be addressed. If you want to make poster viewers comfortable addressing you by your first name, spell that out, don’t just give your initials. The final piece of this top banner is all the appropriate affiliations. Include logos if required by your institutions. Make sure that the fonts are big enough that the title and names can be read from a distance.
Directly below the banner should come the most important information—the problem you are trying to solve, how you are trying to solve it, and the main take-away messages from your work. Your conclusions are the most important part of the poster and should be up over people's heads where everyone can see them, not down by their waists in the lower right corner of the poster. Make sure the fonts are large enough that these important parts are visible from 2.44 m (8 ft) away. Put the stuff that only the most enthusiastic visitors will be interested in at the bottom. An effective way to organize the information is in columns, the leftmost being the background, the center the approach, and the third the results. In each arrange the information with the most important at the top.
Minimize the number of words on the poster. Save the longer, more detailed text for your paper, not the poster. When you are presenting the poster in person, you should be able to provide all necessary words orally. You do want to have some text on the poster for people viewing the poster when you are not there, however, you should use the minimum number of words needed to convey the important points of the poster. The goal is to interest people in talking to you or reading your paper, not to present all of the information that would be in the paper.
Advice on effectively presenting a poster:
Preparing for a poster presentation is different than preparing for a talk because with a poster you can (and should) adjust your presentation based on the interests of each visitor. It is helpful to prepare some general talking points for three different scenarios: a very brief overview (1-2 minutes), a slightly longer mid-level walk through that highlights the important points of your work for a general audience, and a more detailed explanation for the rare visitor who is an expert in your specific research topic. Try to learn from each visitor to your poster how much detail they are interested in. If they want a two-minute overview of your poster, give that to them, not the full twenty-minute version. You will reach a broader audience that way since you will get to talk to more people, and you will have more time to spend with experts who are interested in the details. If you have organized the poster with the important information at the top, you can use just the top information for a short presentation and use the material further down the column for longer presentations or for answering questions. Embrace questions from the viewers. People are much more engaged when they are in discussions than they are in passively listening to a presentation.
Engage with everyone who is looking at your poster, not just the first individual that you started talking to. Think of your job as presenting the poster to everyone who is interested instead of having a series of one-on-one conversations. If you ignore someone who is interested in your poster and they walk away, you may have lost the opportunity to impress a potential future employer, explain your work to a confused referee of your paper, or engage with a potential collaborator.