Professor of Natural Products Chemistry, Food Chemistry, Phytotherapy and Pharmacognosy, Pharmacognosy Department, Faculty of Pharmacy, Ain-Shams University, Cairo, Egypt.
This video highlights a major flaw in the way poster presentations are organized at conferences. Too often, conferences accept as many posters as they have space for, without putting thought into how to truly engage the audience. Scholars are simply asked to hang their posters and stand by them for 2-4 hours, waiting—hoping—someone will come by. Afterward, they take their posters down and go home. But imagine this: a scholar has worked tirelessly for 2-3 years on a project. They’ve poured their passion, sweat, and countless hours into their research. Finally, they have the opportunity to share it with their peers, eager to spark conversations and dive deep into the details. Yet, there they stand, full of hope, and no one shows any interest. It’s not just disappointing—it’s heartbreaking. Conferences need to do better. They should actively encourage attendees to visit the posters, perhaps by offering incentives or organizing competitions where participants engage with the details of the posters. This would foster discussions, recognition, and appreciation for the scholars' hard work. These researchers invest years of their lives and significant financial resources to attend these conferences. The least they deserve is the attention and recognition their efforts warrant. The current conference model is failing them, and it’s time for a dramatic change.
I see the problem very differently. At conferences I attend, easily 90% of the posters and quite a few of the talks are useless work that should never have been done, or work that was done poorly. Conferences operate on a purely financial motivation, and happily accept huge numbers of speakers and poster presenters. And the researchers are their customers, not the meeting attendees, who are left desperately trying to find content that is actually worth their time. We need FEWER conferences and better quality control on the content. We also need a financial model for academia that allows schools to TEACH students and not be forced to bring in large amounts of research funding just to keep their schools funded.
No conference ever clearly outlines the criteria the jury uses to judge posters. There’s no explanation for how winners are actually chosen. It’s puzzling how five judges, each with different perspectives and reviewing different posters, can come together to select a single winner. Logically, each judge should independently choose a winner, or all five should be required to assess every poster. In reality, I know some students who’ve fabricated data and still walked away with the best poster award. As for the “People’s Choice Award,” it often feels more like a popularity contest—whoever has the most friends wins, regardless of the quality of their research or effort. It’s even worse when votes, whether online or offline, are manipulated. Just my thoughts. All of your valuable insights and opinions are highly appreciated. :)
conferences are money makers. the organizers care less about the content and science what counts is who is comming and pays the premium for boot and golden sponsorship. The others are the numbers to make the profit big. historically conferences are more and more expensive, choosing fancy places to attract industry people. If you do a search you will find that a lot of conferences are now in places where the accommodations costs are above GSA rate, forcing those that must be on GSA rate to find accommodation far away from conference venue, adding another burden.
Oral Presentations are no better either. I have been to some of the "top conferences". But hardly any of the presenters make effort to present their papers in such a way that the audience can understand. They simply show graphs, figures etc from their papers and sometimes even reading stuff from the paper itself. I would rather read the original paper to better understand it. I don't want to say anything else as I may spark a controversy but lets just say I never liked the idea of these conferences at all..
When I used to attend the American Geophysical Union conferences, posters were the place to be. The poster area buzzed with discussions. I never understood why this is not so in other conferences. Posters is were you presented fresh data and research and had the opportunity of discussion and feedback before finalising your article and submitting it for publication. An oral presentation was more about finished work and exposure. Both modes of engagement are important.
Or - and this will blow your mind ;) - we, the attendees should show solidarity with the people who are now where perhaps we were a few short years ago (sweating cold bullets next to a poster board) - and we should just give more of a damn about the presenters of posters, and find time to visit the 'poster dungeon' and engage its denizens in thoughtful conversation. It will pay itself forward, and the beautiful part of this solution is that it requires very little from us, since if many folks do this, each one has to only do a little.
It would help if every other poster didn’t look like a mediocre set of PowerPoint slides rearranged into poster-form. It would also help if the poster’s authors had even half the energy this guy talking to the pigeon has. It’s not incumbent on the conference organizers to compensate for the lack of people’s originality and presentation skills using contests and faux engagement strategies. You wouldn’t propose the same for presentations, would you? If a presentation is incoherent or non-engaging, you wouldn’t blame the audience for not paying attention. Same with posters. The standard needs to be raised. Instead of forcing engagement, maybe conferences could do more appropriate vetting for posters. The status quo is that the decision on a poster being accepted at a conference is based on a non-visual abstract. It makes absolutely no sense. Posters are visual media, so visual abstracts should be submitted as well. And if someone’s subject matter doesn’t lend itself to anything visually useful or appealing, then maybe they shouldn’t be at the poster session.
I do understand and agree. And sometimes, we have too many people crammed in a hall trying to go through as many posters as possible. I recently went through this experience. There was too much noise and it was hard to concentrate on what the poster presenter was explaining about. For me, the best way to deal with such situation is to get their name and contact details and request digital cooy of the poster. This helps to make stronger connections AND learn about the topic. The real growth comes from reflection on the topic and then asking questions.
Having attended the conference where this video was taken, I disagree. I had a 4-hour window to present my poster, and was only required to be there for one specific hour. I ended up staying by my poster for the entire time because of the constant flow of people who wanted to talk to me about my poster. Contrast this with my last conference, where there was no poster session. Instead, I was more or less expected to spend every lunch and break by my poster, and not even the attendants knew when to show up to view them. This video was from Society for Neuroscience (SfN), which is an enormous conference. Presenters are aware what they’re getting themselves into when they submit. Posters are grouped by theme so attendees can use the app to schedule their visits and maximize their time with the posters they want. If people aren’t engaging with your poster, make an engaging poster! :) maybe if it’s engaging enough, it’ll even attract the attention of a few birds!