Instructions for Poster Session Presenters
First, thank you for helping the Society start
a new traditional. Those of us who are regulars at specialty meetings (e.g.,
demography, public health, geography) know that poster presentations can be a
great way to showcase one's work in a friendly, interactive way that often
results in sustained collaborative relationships. Following the PAA (Population
Association of America) approach, the SSS poster session in
Poster sessions are the routine at most natural science meetings. In some cases, celebrity scientists (or their minions) will sneak into the poster room during predawn hours and simply pin up an entire paper. That permits them to publicize their latest breakthroughs without rubbing shoulders with the masses. This is not what we have in mind. The new generation of cheap inkjet printers gives us all the ability to produce attractive color graphics and large font tabular material. And, maybe you are good with a camera. All the better!
1. Poster Layout
The idea is to arrange a set of materials in a way that a reader--actually, a crowd of readers in a busy poster session--can follow what you have done and understand your conclusions. The poster boards are four feet high and eight feet long. I find that gives me a huge space (32 sq. ft.) with which to work. You can approximate the space by laying out your material on a conference room table. The poster boards are mounted on stands. Use is made of both the front and the back of the poster stand; i.e., someone else will be presenting on the other side of the poster board, but you will not be able to see them. We have arranged for very nice poster boards that are surfaced with female velcro. You can purchase small velcro dots or squares at Office Depot or similar supply company. These dots and squares have removable adhesive on one side (to adhere to your posted materials) and velcro on the other. The kits usually come with both male and female velcro which gives you a way to practice your arrangement on a wall. This makes it remarkably easy to post your materials and rearrange them without damage. The poster boards also accept push pins, but the old fashioned way is not nearly as easy as the velcro approach (and pins leave holes in your posted material).
The arrangement of your materials is very important in communicating to your audience. Each poster should have a title banner (text of title should be close to that in the printed program). In the same way that you find papers on the program that interest you, members will be looking for certain titles on poster displays. To be readable from a distance, the title should be printed in a large font (at least one inch high). Individual items (tables, charts, graphs, photos, pages of textual material) should be arranged under the title in a series of columns beginning on the left. Thus, browsers read from the top down in the leftmost column and work across the presentation, ending on the right. Colorful frames for the individual components of your display are also a nice touch. At this point, you may want to click her to check out a sample poster.
Along with your visual material, you will want to post short narrative explanations. Though they are too small to read on the sample poster, the yellow squares are explanations of the graphics and tables (a use of the sticky note metaphor). This guides a browser through your presentation even if you are not there to walk them through. Of course, you will also want to post identifying information (name, affiliation, etc.) in the same way that you would have a title page for a paper.
2. Poster Session Procedures
The poster stands will be ready for you on
Friday morning (April 4) in the La Nouvelle Orleans room. Each poster surface
will be numbered from 1 to 40. I will post the assigned numbers by name here
and on the side of poster number 1. The presentations will be grouped as they
are in the printed program to give some substantive organization to the
session. By no later than
3. Hints