Conference posters

After submitting your paper to a conference, instead of being invited to make a ten-minute presentation, you may be invited to present a poster instead. This is a good opportunity to put your work in front of others, and it should involve different techniques to those involved in making a presentation.

The first thing about posters is that your message about the research you are doing is more important than any corporate or brand image of your institution. I would avoid the habit of cluttering up your valuable piece of paper with logos, names of research units, collaborators and so on. You may find that there are certain requirements of some funding agencies and some institutions to have a clear acknowledgement of their support. These should be adhered to. But don't add unnecessary logos and associated names unless they are really needed.

Next, it is good to use graphics and large fonts. A good poster will focus on one aspect of your work, rather than trying to put everything across. There is no need for bibliographical references, and it is good to avoid jargon and complex sentences; big fonts, nice graphics and short messages. Graphical communication works best when you avoid fussy and unnecessary embellishments such as 3D, shadows, gratuitous use of colour and so on (most of the default settings in Microsoft Power-point and the like need to be changed to remove many of these features; it was developed for business presentations, not research presentations). An overriding principle is that the density of data in a graphic should be greater than the equivalent text that might alternatively be used to represent the same data. So pie charts are a complete waste of paper, because the message in a pie chart can be put across in one sentence of text. Histograms are frequently better portrayed as a list of labels and numbers. Your audience is not innumerate, and they understand the relative sizes of numbers. (You don’t need to draw me a picture to explain that 75 is much bigger than 10.) Graphics work best when every line, colour, symbol and label perform a function that is more concise than writing things out. There is some really good advice and detailed exposition on the use of graphics for conveying information by Edward Tufte; get hold of it if you can.

It is interesting to type “scientific posters” into Google. That is how I stumbled upon some useful guidance from North Carolina State University where it is emphasized that there are basic principles of scientific poster design: Focus, Graphics, Order. I like the advice given there. Also, I recommend a good PhD Blog, called the Thesis Whisperer, where there is further good advice.

To summarize, this is a good opportunity to develop a skill-set that differs from making presentations. Posters should have minimal clutter. There should be a clear focus, good use of graphics and a clear sequence of ideas. This will make it easier for observers to ask questions and for you talk about your research. Finally, it is OK to be uncertain about research that is in progress.

Rhythmic ripples

As part of a two-day research meeting, we took part in a workshop. It involved everyone, each in a solitary way. We each had to pour ourselves a glass of water, but not the glasses that most of us were already drinking from. Smaller tumblers were issued. We were asked not to drink the water straight away, but to "experience" the glass of water... like a meditation. We had to spend five minutes experiencing the glass of water. So I suspended my disbelief and cynicism, and reached out my hand to grasp my glass gently, without picking it up. I could see rhythmic ripples on the surface, very small, some of which may have been my pulse. Interlaced with this was another rhythm, perhaps caused by my neighbour tapping his foot. Bigger, less rhythmic ripples occurred from time to time as another neighbour adjusted his position. I saw the ceiling lights reflected on the surface, and refracted below the surface, reflecting off the inside of the glass. There were 28 different points of light, in groups of two or three, on the surface. Below the surface there were 58. Then the five minutes were up and I'd not yet taken a sip. Too slow, me.

The next part of the workshop involved running your tongue over all of your teeth, inside and out, all surfaces of the teeth that could be reached with the tongue. I cannot now recall how long that went on for. We were given a piece of A4 drawing paper and a pencil. Then we had to close our eyes, put the pencil on the paper, and envision our mouths. We then signed consent forms for our drawings to be used as part of a research project on art in healthcare. That was our workshop experience. Puzzling, eh?

ARCOM Proceedings

I suddenly remembered that I had not yet finished with ARCOM 2009! Each paper will now be made into an individual PDF and uploaded to the ARCOM website from where it can be downloaded free of charge. What a great service! It is a laborious task, though, and I am really pleased to have enlisted the help of my newest PhD student, Hafizah Mohd Latif, who is sufficiently knowledgable about computers to add her strength to mine. Now the task will be completed much sooner than I could do it myself. The only thing that remains then will be to update the database so that these files can be discovered by searching in the abstracts database. It should not take too long to get all this sorted out for another year.

If you want to see previous year's papers, go to www.arcom.ac.uk, click on "Abstracts", click on the link to the search page, click on Browse, then click on "ARCOM Annual Conferences", then choose a year, and you can browse all the papers, downloading any that you want to read.

SCME PhD Conference

Our annual PhD Conference was particularly enjoyable this year. Graeme Larsen and Katie Saxelby-Smith introduced some new features, notable a poster presentation session in the afternoon, over a buffet lunch. In the morning, eight of our PhD student presented their work in varying states of completion, mostly early stage researchers, and the audience provided feedback and probing questions. The room was full, and there was good representation from Professors to Research Students, and the whole thing ran as smooth as clockwork. I think this was the eighth year that we have run this, but it is certainly the most successful one to date. Graeme and Katie did us proud.