My Little Poster Revolution for COMP 2014 (Part 2)

... or how I plan to make my poster not suck

This is the 2nd posting in a series describing my experiment on creating a poster at the Canadian Organization of Medical Physics 2014 Conference. See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3  and Part 4 for other  entries.

While frantically trying to organize my thoughts on our conference poster, I started to generate a list of what I thought of what I'd like to see in a poster. Here are some of the things that appeal to me:

• a link to all the information/content in the poster, such as PDF or summarizing document;
• access to actual data in the poster, so that I could draw my own conclusions or examine things on my own time and potentially in more detail;
• a way to add or view comments from the author, and others (i.e., some level of interaction) so as to make the learning experience more dynamic and in 'realtime';
• some degree of interactivity with the poster itself. This could be through:
• multimedia content;
• provide some level of control to the reader, like scrolling through a self-directed powerpoint;
• some way of integrating technology within the poster itself, either via smart phone, tablet technology, computers, etc.
• a conclusion that could be stated in about 2 sentences, using a language that doesn't require me to read the entire poster's content.

So, I decided to create a poster effectively for myself, hoping to find ways to address the things that appeal to me.

Here were the constraints, some of which are typical in standard posters:

• The poster requires 48x48 inches of printed media;
• Obviously, any gadgets that I could use had to be secured to the poster, and probably little access to power / plug ins;
• I probably couldn't provide any more than 30 hours of work on the entire project, and a timeline that required me to get this work down about 1 week before the actual conference itself.

Poster Layout

The poster itself is printed media (either on paper or cloth), which means using software such as Adobe Photoshop / Power point / etc. In the end, I elected to go with PowerPoint, simply because I didn't have universal access to Adobe products (but for the record, using Adobe products would have been my preference).

Poster design

I explored the web for some ideas on poster design. Some nice ideas to sample from include Colin Purrington's website (http://colinpurrington.com/tips/academic/posterdesign). I thought the 'pimping your poster' idea was brilliant, and thought why shouldn't I do this. Personally, unless you plan to post up your poster in your lab hallways, the printed poster gets no exposure outside of the conference itself: so why not let folks write all over it?

Another helpful website was a lib-guide at NYU's Bern Dibner Library of Science and Technology (http://poly.libguides.com/content.php?pid=174875&sid=1471879). This a great resource, and should be the envy of librarians everywhere.

I also spent some time on this website devoted to better posters, as the name would suggest: http://betterposters.blogspot.ca. It has some interesting marketing tips and tricks worth reading.

I must have spent about 2 hours perusing the web with different search terms, looking for ideas on how to organize the poster and make it more interesting. In the end, I determined the following:

1. Ensure there is a link to a PDF of the long abstract. This would be through either providing the link itself or a QR code. I debated for a while on using a QR code, an idea provided by @WarrenG1983 (https://twitter.com/WarrenG1983/status/469265485637251072). I looked into the pros/cons of using a QR code, read this (http://www.pfsweb.com/blog/is-the-qr-code-dead/), but thought why not give it a try.
2. In some way, provide a link to multimedia and supplementary material so as to enrich the poster content. By doing this, I could reduce some of the text in the poster itself by providing supplementary details, and make the poster more interesting by providing a level of interactivity. One approach was to provide a link to a more in-depth power-point presentation and provide a link to http://www.slideshare.net. But why stop at slideshare and Powerpoint? I've used Prezi.net for some of my presentation (http://prezi.com/user/dawf58f40g0e/). One can embed YouTube videos, PDFs, text, images, and all the other tools you commonly see in PowerPoint, but with a little more flair. 
3. Provide a method for viewers to access the multimedia while at the poster itself. I decided that while I can provide a link to the multimedia enriched Prezi, not everyone will have access to a smart phone / tablet while perusing the conference posters. So, why not put my 1st generation iPad to use? I don't use it nearly as much as I used to and -provided it is secured to the poster- it could be a nice way to generate some interest in the poster. So I designed the poster layout such that the focus is on the iPad itself.
4. Focus less on the WHO and more on the WHAT, WHY and HOW. People should care more about the WHAT/WHY/HOW and less on the WHO. The WHO shouldn't take up much real-estate on the poster. Provide a place where people can take your business card if they prefer old-school methods of contact.
5. Use a gentle combination of Serif and San Serif fonts. I've always been and advocate of San Serif fonts, so mixing them made me a bit uncomfortable despite reading that, from a design standpoint, San Serif is best for titles, and reading text is slightly easier with Serif. 
6. Try to ensure there is a logical 'pathway' for the eye to follow for the poster. One of the problems with posters is figuring out where to start and end reading the contents. If you're like me, I often look for the title, then the conclusion. And if it interests me, start looking at the figures and results... either way, the path the eye takes tends to be ectatic. To help the reader control how they access the material they are interested in, I integrated a circle in the poster with an arrow to indicate the starting point. I placed my text in a clock-wise direction, hoping it is easier for the eye to follow a closed trajectory. It also helps reinforce 'closing the loop' nature of the poster itself. At the centre of the poster, I provided room for the IPad, which provides the multimedia.
7. Drop the 'Abstract' from the poster and the other things such as Methods/Results. All that stuff is in the conference proceedings. Chances are that some viewers may have read the abstracts before arriving to view the posters and have made an effort to visit your poster. So why provide details which repeat what they've already read? Instead, provide titles to the poster which help provide a narrative.
8. Try to embrace some design principles such as the use of empty spaces, balance and symmetry.
9. If time permits, include a YouTube video for those who would like a video presentation. But keep it to within 3 minutes (anything longer and your likely to loose some level of attention).

In the next post, I will describe the poster itself, the time needed to create it and whether I was successful in achieving any of the goals I set out for.

Feel free to leave a comment. Always looking for suggestions!

My Little Poster Revolution for COMP 2014 (Part 1)

... or Why Posters Suck 

This is the first posting in a series describing my experiment on creating a poster at the Canadian Organization of Medical Physics 2014 Conference. See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3  and Part 4 for other  entries.

  
Attending the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Canadian Organization of Medical Physics has become standard operating procedure for me since I've joined the COMP board about 2 years ago. That has been a good thing, but it does limit my educational opportunities since, like many Medical Physicists, my professional allowance affords me to about 1 trip per year (and I'm not smart enough to be invited to other conferences).

While I enjoy the professional stuff, the real joy is in attending the scientific sessions. But I am often overwhelmed and mentally fatigued after a full conference. I chalk this fatigue up to simple information overload. If you follow my tweets, you may have read on my issues with the way conferences are organized. I'm trying to distill my thoughts into a manifesto of sorts which I will post here if I ever complete it. But it is starting to look something like this:

1. Scientific conference material should be driven by attendees, not by conference organizers.
2. Sessions should be organized to enhance and promote more social interaction.
3.  The amount of work invested in a submission should be proportional to the time devoted in preparing it.
4. There must be true interaction between experts and non-experts.
5. We must encourage open source models for data exchange and presentation.

Given these personal reflections, you can imagine how I might have felt when my submission was accepted for poster presentation (groan).

Now, I actually like creating posters. I like designing posters. I find it fun. But they require much more work, time, and money than an oral presentation. There are issues which make posters less favorable  than an oral presentations:

• Collapsing all content on a single page requires much more planning than an creating a Powerpoint. Whereas you might have 10-15 slides to describe your data, you have to organize all your science onto a single page.
• Narrative dialogue is much easier with serially presented slides, whereas with a poster you have to lead the reader through your story. This takes some effort to organize.
• There is a financial cost to printing that is not (generally) required if presenting orally.
• There are more logistical issues with the poster, such as 
• transporting it - it can be a real bother on planes, as opposed to a USB key for an oral presentation;
• mounting and dismounting it - poster presenters will spend at least an extra 10-20 minutes setting it up and taking it down, which is time not spent doing something else;
• if you have to arrive to the conference after it starts, or leave before it ends, you have to coax a colleague to put it up / take it down. Bother.
• The time dedicated to "poster viewing" may not actually be during the conference sessions itself. So you have a less compliant captive audience. 
• Sometimes the 'poster' viewing time is coupled with another social event, which means if you present a poster, you are not afforded the time to view the posters. Sometimes a conference will devote specific time where poster presenters should be present at their poster. This is good, but you miss out on the opportunity to mingle with the other poster presenters who must also stick around their posters. This effectively reduces the total number of potential interactions with you and your poster.
• The quality of interaction during a poster session is not serial, but more random in nature. Unlike questions during an oral presentation, the quality of questioning can build upon previous questions.While some questions during orals can be strange, you have a moderator to keep the focus and timeliness of questions asked.
• There is significant regurgitation of information during the poster session / interactions. For posters, you may find yourself answering the same questions to several individuals. Unlike the oral presentation, you don`t have captive audience to respond to.
 

Sure, there are a lot of benefits for having a poster, but in my personal opinion, the cost / benefit ratio for posters leaves me wanting.

So, this year, I plan to do something about it.