First Poster Presentation - a few questions

[Adelaide9216]

I am also going to be presenting my first poster at my first conference this year and found this thread really useful. Thanks

[Adelaide9216]

I forgot to mention that I will also be competing for a young researcher contest for that conference. Any tips? I feel like it could be helpful for my potential career in academia if I won it. 

[fuzzylogician]

3 hours ago, Adelaide9216 said:

I forgot to mention that I will also be competing for a young researcher contest for that conference. Any tips? I feel like it could be helpful for my potential career in academia if I won it. 

I wouldn't hang too many hopes on this particular award, although it's of course always nice to win. (But losing isn't a big deal, so don't stress over it.) What does the competition entail, exactly? 

[Adelaide9216]

It's a contest to encourage young researchers basically in their first steps in their career in academia. 

[fuzzylogician]

22 minutes ago, Adelaide9216 said:

It's a contest to encourage young researchers basically in their first steps in their career in academia. 

Okay, but is there anything you need to do? Or do you just show up and be your wonderful natural self? What are the selection criteria for this award? 

[Adelaide9216]

I have no idea. I just have to present my poster in front of a jury, answer a few questions and then they make the decision.

[fuzzylogician]

Okay, in that case it would stand to reason that you want to find out how much time you want to have, and that you actually practice your presentation in front of a local audience before you go. Unlike our advice above to "go natural", this would be one case when practice would be a good idea. Also unlike a normal poster presentation, I don't know if you would get interrupted with questions during the presentation itself, although that's a very common thing normally. You could invite questions during (if you want), but still you might have to present like so (which, if you've done posters before, would be kind of unusual). You probably want to practice just presenting without interruptions and also perhaps with, if you've never done this before. 

[TakeruK]

At the big annual conferences in my field, undergraduate and graduate students have the option of choosing to enter the poster competition, in which judges will evaluate your poster on a specific day using a specific rubric. Postdocs & faculty evaluate graduate student posters and graduate students, postdocs and faculty evaluate undergrad posters. I've evaluated undergrad posters for two years now. Here are some tips that would also apply to graduate student poster presentations (the rubric is generally the same, just a different standard):

- If you can find the rubric ahead of time, take a look at it. Our society's evaluation guidelines are clearly specified. There is a list of 6 standard questions all the judges must either ask or receive answers naturally through the course of your presentation.

- Make sure your presentation is complete. Include the background, methods, data analysis, results, implications and future work. 

- Be prepared to answer questions that put your work in the big picture context, such as, "If you could have the capability of determining any currently unknown data/property, which would be the most helpful and why?" and/or "How does your result inform other studies in your field?"

- Practice your spiel. Make a special spiel just for the judges and assume that they are a researcher in your field but know nothing about your subfield. Don't be afraid to repeat some stuff that a specialist would know---it will show that you know it too.

- Don't do your entire spiel from start to finish. Plan to have lots of natural breakpoints to allow the judge to ask questions. Remember that the judge is also spending the entire day at the conference and trying to fit in their judging assignments in the limited time they have and also see the posters they want to see. They will be tired, potentially distracted and you don't want to lose them after the first minute and continue talking and have them miss your points.

- Don't forget that your speech is not the only part of your evaluation. You might be evaluated on your attitude/demeanor so don't slouch away in the corner---stay near your poster and engage people as they walk by. And of course, a big part might be on poster design as well. It's the only part you can spend time on prior to the conference, so take some time to ensure a nice readable poster design.

That said, this award is not going to make or break your career. It's nice to win but as fuzzylogician said, no big deal if you don't. I would spend time preparing to win because it will have a lot of good side effects, such as improving your presentation to every other person (non-judges) as well. I think making a good impression by thorough presentation will actually do more for your future than winning this prize, so it's a win-win situation

[Adelaide9216]

Thanks everyone for your advice.

 

For the 6 basic questions, what are they usually? I have no access to the grading rubric at this moment. Will I come off as weird if I ask it to the organizers? 

Edited March 13, 2017 by Adelaide9216

[TakeruK]

Well, I'm sure the basic questions depend a lot on the competition. If you want a sample, here is the rubric I used when I judged undergraduate posters at my field's big annual conference:

https://aas.org/files/resources/aas229_chambliss_judging_form_undergraduate_v7b.pdf

They don't have the questions on there, but the six questions correspond directly to the first six rubric criteria, so you can probably guess what they were. 

It's perfectly fine to ask the conference organizers if they have any details about how the posters will be graded for their competition. You might get a reply that is something like "more details later" or you might get something not very useful / very generic (probably means they don't have a strict criteria and it's just going to be whatever the judges like best).

[RBspkRuP]

A good source if you know how to use latex is their poster templates: http://www.latextemplates.com/cat/conference-posters. Even if you don't know how to use latex it might still be good indicator for layouts! This is what I used exclusively for my posters and were commonly used in the STEM fields at my school. 

[Adelaide9216]

Amazing! Thanks to both of you!

[Adelaide9216]

On 15 mai 2015 at 1:52 PM, beefgallo said:

Just searching the internets, I stumbled upon this video on yotube
 

 

it is rather funny and rather amateurishly made, in a sweet way, but the tips seem solid.

Yes, the advice seems solid. Thanks for sharing this!

[Adelaide9216]

Do students usually make their posters themselves? I'm not technology-savy if you know what I mean but I can learn!

[fuzzylogician]

3 minutes ago, Adelaide9216 said:

Do students usually make their posters themselves? I'm not technology-savy if you know what I mean but I can learn!

Yes. It's really not that hard. There's lots of advice online on how to get started. 

[Adelaide9216]

Hello,

I have made myself a template. I'd need someone by private message to take a quick look at it.

 

 

[rising_star]

7 hours ago, Adelaide9216 said:

Hello,

I have made myself a template. I'd need someone by private message to take a quick look at it.

Honestly, what you need is to work with your advisor and students in your department. They're the ones who will know the most about the preferred/ideal format for a poster in your field.

[Adelaide9216]

I know and I am doing that as well. I just wanted some extra input

[Adelaide9216]

In terms of the color for the background of the poster, is it preferable to have something typical (white and light blue) like most of the ones I have came across online, or is it possible to have something more playful and colorful? Would that still be professionnal-looking? Or is it preferable that all posters at the conference kinda look the same? 

[TakeruK]

4 hours ago, Adelaide9216 said:

In terms of the color for the background of the poster, is it preferable to have something typical (white and light blue) like most of the ones I have came across online, or is it possible to have something more playful and colorful? Would that still be professionnal-looking? Or is it preferable that all posters at the conference kinda look the same? 

It is definitely not a good thing to have all posters look the same. At least in my field, the poster hall has several hundred posters up at once and no one can view it all. So you want your poster to stand out (in a professional way, and I think fun colours or designs are still professional) so that you have a higher chance of attracting people to your poster. One of my friends is extremely skilled at graphic design (he could do it for a living probably if he wanted to) and people love his posters. Even in years after the conference, people talk about his great looking posters. So standing out from the crowd is definitely a good thing.

I find that this blog, http://betterposters.blogspot.com/, has very good advice. They often have posters where readers submit their posters for critique and you can learn a lot from these. You can also browse through the older posts and see the range in poster styles and find something that you like. It's amazing how small visual differences can really change how you feel about a poster. That said, I would still spend more time on the content than the design, so in your efforts to make it look great, don't neglect having impactful content as well
 

Edit: I was looking for an example poster that doesn't look like the 100s of other academic posters but also did a good job of communicating its science. I found one on the blog (below). It is an award-winning poster from a conference (and I can see why) but it's worth reading the blog post on it to see some of the design critiques.

[Adelaide9216]

I finished designing my first poster ever. For the handout though, is three pages two long? (1 page context, 1 page references, 1 page smaller version of my poster).

[Eigen]

What do you mean by handouts? Is this something specific to your field? I've never seen people with handouts at a poster session. 

I know some other posters talk about using them, but I'd definitely check with your advisor, as it would look strange at any conference I've gone to. 

[fuzzylogician]

2 minutes ago, Eigen said:

What do you mean by handouts? Is this something specific to your field? I've never seen people with handouts at a poster session. 

My field does that all the time.

Personally I would go for one sheet of paper, so at most two pages, for a poster session. 

[Eigen]

Guess it's field specific then. I would check with an advisor, as it would be really out of place at any conference I've been to. 

[TakeruK]

We do handouts in our field for posters too. But never more than one page. Often smaller than one single piece of paper.

Sometimes it is just a scaled down version of the poster in case someone wants to "take home a copy", but this is less useful because 1) we all have camera phones and 2) most posters don't scale down very well. 

For my field, I would instead recommend a quarter-sheet that has your poster title, your name, contact info, and the main results (maybe just the main plot). Alternatively, if you have a business card, a quarter-sheet with the main plot, poster title and your business card attached is great too.