a real-world one...
The conferences I go to have both talks and poster sesions. At poster session, you stick up a poster explaining your latest results and how exciting they are; then people wander past and maybe start a discussion with you about it. Or they start one with the guy next to you, and you stand there looking lonely.

Anyway, wind the clock back some years til when I was just a grad student.

So I was by my poster, which natuarally contained some really quite exciting results (which was why I didn't get a talk) and two big cheeses (let's call them JR and EG) walk by, then stop, look at my poster briefly and start talking to each other quietly.

So I wait. No questions for me? Why are they discussing my poster without me, when I'm right here? But I wait some more.

After a bit I gently interrupt them and suggest that they ask me about my poster, rather than each other.

"Well", says JR, "Actually we were talking about something else, but do tell us about your work anyway..."
(haberman is singing in the changes, Thu 18 Sep 2008, 11:09, 2 replies)

Hmmm...
Some of the conferences that I attend have poster sessions.

I have never, ever, ever seen the point of them. For my area, depending on the journal to which you submit, a paper might be expected to be anywhere between 4000 and 10000 words. Typically, they're about 6k. That's thirty pages of close argument, with no diagrams or tables of results. Just text.

I like that format. It makes for good papers. Quite what a poster is supposed to achieve is anyone's guess.

Still: a lot of people in my field - or who think they're in my field - are doctors, and they're the ones with the money. So we have to keep them happy.

Smug twats.

Still: I refuse ever to present a poster. I'll happily give an hour-long paper (or even a 15 minute one) - but no poster will ever appear on my CV.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 18 Sep 2008, 11:24, closed)

well
in physics they're quite useful. You can get the gist of the work if the presenter is absent, and you get to ask questions if they're there. I've known people to prefer to give posters over talks.

I mostly prefer talks, but largely because they're better for my (work's) visibility; but they're not very interactive.
(haberman is singing in the changes, Thu 18 Sep 2008, 11:33, closed)