A Poster Pop is a sixty second advertisement for a poster. You get one slide to supplement your presentation, and the goal is to attract people to your poster. Poster pops are a challenge, since you have to squeeze in your message in a short time. It’s a good time to practice your “elevator pitch”: describe your work to someone who doesn’t already know what you’re doing, and do it effectively in a short time (as if you only have the length of an elevator ride). The trick here is that you’re not talking about everything that you’re doing, but rather just on what your poster is presenting.
I myself am presenting both a Poster Pop and a poster. My poster pop is in the later session, so this poster pop presentation post is only related to the early session. Keep in mind, these are my own opinions about what makes an effective poster pop presentation. If you disagree, I encourage discussion!
Alright, now after the poster pops are done, here are some of my thoughts about what makes an effective poster pop:
1. The slide:
- Do: make your figure easy to read
- Do: summarize the takeaway message of you poster
- Do: make your slide somehow related to what you’re saying. If I looked at your slide long enough, would I be able to figure out what’s going on?
- Do: make sure to credit all of your co-authors on the paper
- Do: make sure that the text and background are highly contrasted for easy reading
- Don’t: give away the all of the milk for free. Leave them a reason to go to your poster.
- Don’t: make your slide completely un-readable.
2. The content of your pitch:
- Do: say what is unique about your poster. Why should I go to yours over someone else’s?
- Do: tell us where to find your poster
- Do: be excited and speak clearly!
- Do: have good timing! Don’t go over time!
- Do: make what you’re saying related to what’s on your slide.
- Do: make sure that you have a clear beginning, middle, and end.
- Don’t: say the same thing you’re saying in your oral pitch of your poster. This has a different purpose.
- Don’t: just read what you poster says.
- Don’t: stare down at your notes the whole time.
- Don’t: write your whole script out. Be flexible!
- Don’t: make fun of someone else’s work
Phew! That is a lot to fit in to a 60 second pitch. Granted, for our poster pops we have 2 minutes, but that’s still pretty tight.Now that I’ve seen some of these poster pops, I will be well prepared (hopefully!) for my own poster-pop later this afternoon.