Attendees discussed posters with a panel of three experienced graduate student presenters and Dr. Barbara Moffatt, a poster veteran from UW's Biology department. Panelist Lucy Sportza, a PhD candidate in Planning, spoke about getting a poster idea submitted to and accepted by a conference. Sportza uses newsgroups and academic journals to learn of poster presentation opportunities. At many conferences, presenters can choose to do either a poster or an oral presentation. Sportza prefers posters when she is presenting on research still in progress.
Oral presentations are more suitable for completed research.
Good posters are attractive and easy to read, said panelist Gillian Goward, a Chemistry PhD candidate. However, there are many common pitfalls. As a rule of thumb, Goward makes her posters legible from three feet away. This means using large fonts and mixing text with pictures, graphs, and diagrams. It is a good idea to put poster text in bulleted points rather than paragraphs, Goward continued, and to use colour as long as it is not distracting.