My Project Gallery Revolution (Part 2)

This is the second posting in a series describing my experiment on creating a project gallery at the Canadian Organization of Medical Physics 2015 Winter School. See Part 1 for the first entry.

This year's Winter School is held at the Fairmont Hotel in Montebello. Its a beautiful location and I'm looking forward to the hotel fully constructed from logs, and the storied fireplace.

The project gallery will be hosted somewhere inside the hotel and, knowing how these things normally go, it's likely held in a conference room. The format for the gallery is as follows:

Project Gallery Presentations
During each 60-minute project gallery, a small number of conversational presentations will be held concurrently. Presenters will be assigned tables in a meeting room to display their materials (printed pages, laptop, or other media). Attendees will travel from station to station at intervals set by the session moderator. Winter School faculty will be present to facilitate these sessions. All media must be supplied by the presenter.

I needed to get some idea of what options are available within the room itself... in other words, what do I have at my disposal? After contacting the conference organizers I came to learn the following:
- project galleries are to be displayed on a half round table, which seats around 6 people
- there are ample power sources around the room
- if needed, a table closer to a wall can be acquired if one needs to display something on a wall

But otherwise, theres a lot of room for flexibility.

I spoke to a few colleagues who have attended the Winter School project gallery in the past and asked how they presented. Here is what I heard about how content is shared:
- a board that can sit atop a table, which can be presented like a poster discussion;
- printed material place atop a table, which similarly can be presented like a poster discussion, except a little less constraining.
- a laptop or computer atop a table displaying content, with the opportunity to engage with others via questioning of the content.

There's a lot of pros and cons for the above. Here is my attempt to sift through that.

Poster / board / printed content + discussion
Pros

• Can condense your thoughts into fixed text, figures, and tables
• Allows you to organize your thoughts and the trajectory of your 'story'
• Visual content can act as starting points or queues for further inquiries/questions
• Preference to those who prefer to read and digest content at their own pace
• Relatively cheap, disposable, and flexible

Cons

• Can require a lot of prep-time depending on the extent of the content presented
• Can be visually overwhelming, displaying a lot of content in a constrained geography
• Focuses inquiry/questions on the data/tables/graphs, missing the 'bigger picture' question
• Welcome to Poster tube hell!

Slides and / or  computer display + discussion

Pros

• Can include condensed content AND and an opportunity to present raw data (salivating physicists)
• Can logically sequence text, figures, and tables and generate a trajectory of your story
• Ability for multimedia / digital data etc., such as movies, jpegs, and software (with data!)

Cons

• Like posters, requires a lot of prep-time depending on the extent of the content presented
• Is "too much information" a thing for project galleries?
• Welcome to PowerPoint hell!
• Could be costly, especially if something gets lost!

What I suddenly realized was the similarity of this format to a trade convention or the vendor displays at a conference. But instead of listening to gobbledygook from a vendor, you're hearing some science, with an opportunity to ask questions. Besides the monstrous displays, what draws you to a table and not another? What I didn't want was to bore people to death, and make them endure 'the pitch', clock-watch and move on. I was hoping I could create some opportunity to display some science, have an opportunity to present it, and finally, find a way to actively engage with the audience.

Looping back to the science question(s), what I am hoping to get out of this experience is to hear about the growing pains of introducing image guided radiation therapy (IGRT) on a large and broad scale. I'm also hoping to hear about what others are doing for image guidance that are novel and unique. Finally, I would love to learn more about where people are going with image guidance.

How might I find a way to capture these thoughts from the crowd?

I'd love to hear your ideas!