Making Posters
Attending meetings can be a very good thing. It gives you a break from the daily grind. It gives you a chance to meet new people. It gives you a chance to establish collaborations. It gives you a chance to bounce ideas off people you admire.
The downside to meetings is that they generally require you to make a poster (dread) or a powerpoint presentation (double dread). Next week, I'll be attending the 2006 Yeast Genetics and Molecular Biology Meeting at Princeton. While I'm looking forward to my first chance to explore Princeton and get a feel for New Jersey, I'm not too excited about giving a poster and a talk during the meeting.
So, I'll be spending the bulk of this week in front of my computer in an effort to wrap my project up into a 10 minute talk and a 30 x 40 inch poster. My upper back is already upset with the time I've spent at my desk and it's only Tuesday.
One of the perks of going to a meeting is that you have a chance to see how other people present their data. I've seen posters that royally stank, and posters that drew me in even though I wasn't that keen on the topic. My own poster-making approach is to keep it simple and keep it graphic. Words are your enemy, especially if there are too many of them in a row. As much as possible, I let the data speak for themselves. I use white space rather than lines or boxes as much as possible to delineate the borders between the sections of the poster. I know that this drives some people crazy, but personally I can't stand boxes within boxes within boxes.
So, for the rest of today and part of tomorrow, I'll be assembling figures, sizing them, and adding a few words of description to each figure. As I near completion, I'll do my best to pretend that I'm seeing the poster for the first time, and try to imagine what concepts/terms/diagrams/whatevers might be confusing to someone visiting my poster.
I've been told over and over during my education that it doesn't matter how great your work is if you can't communicate it clearly to others. Designing a poster and presenting it is one of the ways to find out just how good you are (or aren't) at communicating your results. If you get no questions, no interaction, and a lot of blank stares, it's time to find help. No need to torture yourself and others for the next 30 years as you bumble your way through explaining your work.
The downside to meetings is that they generally require you to make a poster (dread) or a powerpoint presentation (double dread). Next week, I'll be attending the 2006 Yeast Genetics and Molecular Biology Meeting at Princeton. While I'm looking forward to my first chance to explore Princeton and get a feel for New Jersey, I'm not too excited about giving a poster and a talk during the meeting.
So, I'll be spending the bulk of this week in front of my computer in an effort to wrap my project up into a 10 minute talk and a 30 x 40 inch poster. My upper back is already upset with the time I've spent at my desk and it's only Tuesday.
One of the perks of going to a meeting is that you have a chance to see how other people present their data. I've seen posters that royally stank, and posters that drew me in even though I wasn't that keen on the topic. My own poster-making approach is to keep it simple and keep it graphic. Words are your enemy, especially if there are too many of them in a row. As much as possible, I let the data speak for themselves. I use white space rather than lines or boxes as much as possible to delineate the borders between the sections of the poster. I know that this drives some people crazy, but personally I can't stand boxes within boxes within boxes.
So, for the rest of today and part of tomorrow, I'll be assembling figures, sizing them, and adding a few words of description to each figure. As I near completion, I'll do my best to pretend that I'm seeing the poster for the first time, and try to imagine what concepts/terms/diagrams/whatevers might be confusing to someone visiting my poster.
I've been told over and over during my education that it doesn't matter how great your work is if you can't communicate it clearly to others. Designing a poster and presenting it is one of the ways to find out just how good you are (or aren't) at communicating your results. If you get no questions, no interaction, and a lot of blank stares, it's time to find help. No need to torture yourself and others for the next 30 years as you bumble your way through explaining your work.
posted by pro_blogger at 2:18 PM
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