Geraldine Clement-Stoneham, Knowledge and Information Manager at the Medical Research Council UK, kindly provides some guidance on how to present a poster at the SLA Annual Conference.
The SLA Annual Conference poster sessions are a great opportunity to share the story of your project and to get feedback from the attendees to inform future work. Having your poster accepted might also be a good argument in your business case to get your employer to support you to attend the conference.
At the SLA annual conference in Vancouver there will be three different poster sessions:
Submitting an abstract
Your first step is to think about a project or a piece of research that you carried out and you could present. You’ll need to submit an abstract, which will be peer-reviewed before your poster is accepted. Your abstract should highlight what the intention behind the project was, how you approached the issue, what you did (methodology) and what your findings/outcome/results are, possibly also covering lessons learned. It is also worth mentioning why you think that this particular project could be of interest to the audience. The abstract should usually be no more than 250 words, so use them carefully to convey the key aspects of your proposal. Topics can range from the launch of a new product or service, to the design of a new training course, a restructuring of your information service, etc. There are no real limitations to the topics, even if traditionally poster sessions are mainly intended to be for the presentation of a research project, for example before it is written up into an article.
Your proposal is accepted! What next…
Your abstract is the starting point to create your poster. You will need to add some structure mirroring that of an article, with an introduction, a methodology section, results and discussion. This can be flexible depending on the nature of your project, but your poster should be laid out in a logical way.
From a practical point of view, the easiest is to create the poster in PowerPoint. All your information needs to fit on one slide, which will then be blown up and printed on a large A1 or A2 sheet. You can easily find templates on the Internet, including this site but if you work in an institution where poster sessions are quite common, your own organisation probably has a branded template available.
When working out the layout of your poster, keep in mind that you can really only highlight the main points around your project. You shouldn’t attempt to capture every detail. Attendees will be spending short amount of time looking at each posters whilst they walk around the room, and will find it challenging to read lots of small text. I see the poster as a starting point for a conversation between you and someone stopping by, rather than trying to provide all of the information on the poster itself. Think about adding some illustrations or graphs, which will not only help catch people’s eyes, but also act as prompts for you to talk through the key points and outcomes of your project. If you are using illustrations or logos, try to get some with high resolution as once the images are enlarged, small defaults are very visible and can make the image unreadable. Also choose a font that is easy to read such as Arial or Verdana.
The following site has some good examples on how to make posters visually interesting: http://dmst.aueb.gr/dds/rese/poster/indexw.htm
So what should you expect on the day?
Geraldine at the all Science Poster Session, SLA Annual Conference 2011 in Philadelphia
Don’t read off your poster but be prepared to give a short summary of your project; including why you embarked on it, how you carried out the work and what your key findings are. Expect people to walk up to your poster and ask you “tell me about your poster”. It is essential for you to have that short presentation ready in your mind as you will need to give it over and over again, but make each viewer feel like it is the first time! Smile and be welcoming, as for the 90 minutes or so of this session, you are “on stage”.But also allow people time to simply view and read your poster, as not everyone will want to discuss it with you. Be ready for all kind of questions, and do not afraid to admit that you don’t have the answer if necessary. Have some business card ready so that you can offer the option to carry on the discussion at a later date.
The following short video gives a good summary of how to make the most of the session: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMSaFUrk-FA&feature=youtu.be
Final top tips
- Be prepared, you must know what is on your poster really well and use it to illustrate your discussion without having to read it.
- Rehearse a short summary you can tell with confidence without sounding like a pre-recorded message!
- Have some business cards ready to allow for follow up discussions
- A handout can be useful, with your poster on one side and further information on the other
- Tell a story, make it interesting and entertaining, even if you have to start again and again
- Turn up early if you want a good spot (near the food and drinks!)
- Have fun! Poster sessions are a great opportunity to interact with people about a topic you feel passionate about
Further information for each poster session, including guidelines, abstract submission instructions and timelines can be found below:
Additional resources
More tips on poster design, including some places to have them printed in London: http://clt.lse.ac.uk/poster-design/
Microsoft Powerpoint own template for poster: http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/templates/science-project-poster-TC104001343.aspx
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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