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The link roundup after the massive Neuroscience meeting is always fun. Just ask Shaena Montanari , “How big is that meeting?” Was at the bar tonight in DC and saw poster tubes... I’m not even a neuroscientist and I knew. #SfN17 With tens of thousands of posters, I find classics like this, from Steve Ramirez : Always check your dimensions before printing. I have written before about how people incorporated video into their poster demonstrations (QR codes, iPdas, etc.). But this is the first time I have seen anyone do a virtual reality (VR) demo at a poster: Advice from Caitlin Vanderweele: Convince your labmate to carry the poster tube. Justin Kiggins noted : Incredible how many posters at #SfN17 have "Preprint available at @biorxivpreprint" & a DOI/QR #asapbio Coffee & Science asked : Poster session didn’t go well? • • • • • Everything old is new again. Fabric posters have been done since the 17th century: The thesis of François Marescot, printed on silk, is on disp

A couple of weeks ago, I featured a poster that had no visitors . This, followed by having to defend poster sessions the next week got me wondering. Just how many people put in the time and effort to give a poster and talk to nobody? I ran a Twitter poll . I even ran it during the Neuroscience meeting , one of the biggest venues for poster presentations in the world. I was surprised. Almost half of respondents have put in a good faith effort and got shut out, with no one talking to them. This might explain why people have such differing reactions to poster sessions. I have given 38 posters at conferences. I have never lacked an audience. And I don’t think that’s because I’m particularly charming or do the hottest science or make the most visually interesting posters. (Of those 38, I’ve made maybe two or three posters I’ve been very happy with). I think I’m just another presenter in the session. My experience has been consistently positive, but now I know I’m in the lucky half. I can

The National Academy of Sciences of the US regularly sponsors the Sackler symposium on science communication. I’ve had gripes with them in the past. I have another this year: Increase of poster sessions, at the expense of actual speaking opportunities, has a negative effect on #scicomm training of young scientists. – John Burris (Tweeted by Kat Bradford ) “We’ve moved away from encouraging graduate students to speak as part of their training – poster sessions instead of seminars etc. Creates an oral skills gap.” (Tweeted by Lou Woodley ) Burris: Our educational system has moved away from #scicomm (ex. grad talks have been replaced by poster sessions). (Tweeted by Sarah Mojarad ) This sounds a lot like a “Back in my day...” opinion that is not provable. Are presentation skills worse than they used to be? Maybe, but maybe not. Poster sessions are the domain of academic conferences. Presentations at conferences, whether oral or poster presentations, are not the sort of broad science

Justin Kiggins wrote : The zone of PIs chatting with each other between the posters was always super intimidating to me. Science writer Bethany Brookshire agrees . It was super intimidating to me. The only thing that gives me courage now is a press badge. ☺️ I know exactly what my colleagues are talking about: little knots of people with grey hair talking to each other, and not to the poster presenters. The age differences make it clear who are students and who are the senior scientists. The “zone of intimidation” is probably more common and more obvious at big conferences, because there is ample space between posters for people to mingle. Big conferences are more likely to have attract people who go there every year, so there is greater chances for people to establish annual “conference cliques.” While that hallway conversations are the best part of conferences, it can be poor form on the part of conference veterans to interact mostly with each other. Some say they plan on being in

Iva Cheung fires a shot across the bow with a long blog post titled, “ Why academic conference posters suck .” Ahem. Obviously, I have thoughts on this. Cheung begins by noting that there is not a lot of research on conference posters. This is true, but it is expanding. Melissa Vaught has been tracking this on Twitter with the #conferencetopub hashtag. Some fields, more on the health and medical side, are all over this. She then makes the arguments that poster sessions are socially awkward. “No one’s quite sure what to do or how to react,” she writes. First, this is a problem with the entire concept of going to an academic conference, not just poster sessions. She even goes on to say, “posters save people with   anxiety from having to speak in front of a crowd.” Second, this is a case of, “Your mileage may vary.” I have seen many people who know very clearly what to do and how to react. Some people feel awkward during any social interactions with new people. People can get better at

Max Showalter had the worst possible poster experience. The thing we all dread. Max wrote: I recently presented this poster at a large conference and of the thousands of people walking by literally no one  stopped to look at my poster. Ignoring that could just be me (I thought I was charming!), could you provide some feedback on what aspects of the poster might be telling people “keep walking”? Ouch. I feel for you, Max. What happened? Let’s have a look at Max’s poster, which he gave at the 2017 Association for the Science of Limnology and Oceanography “Aquatic Sciences” meeting . Click to enlarge! Max’s poster is far from the worst I’ve seen. The layout is clean and the colours are attractive. Why didn’t it find an audience? As journalists say, this poster “buries the lede.” I think the issue is there is no clear entry point. For starters, the title is maybe a little small, and what it says is not helpful to me. I know what “low temperature” and “taxis” are. But I do not know what