Some of you are veterans of methods conferences, but about half of you are not. All of you will be interested to hear more about your responsibilities for the meeting. We are going to have a "poster session" for you to present your research.
Now for the details.
What is a "poster"? Oddly enough, poster sessions are a normal component of natural science conferences, and they are actually the vehicle through which an overwhelming proportion of information is passed during those meetings. So, don't be surprised if this is a presentation format you are not accustomed to. The enclosed instruction sheet (taken from the American Association for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) describes the details of a poster. We would like you to follow these instructions to the letter.
What should you present? For students far along on their dissertation, this is an opportunity to get members of the methods section to review your thesis work. For others this is a chance to get an enormous amount of feedback on future conference, working, or late-stage papers, research and grant proposals, as well as new ideas that might potentially become part of a dissertation. Given that the topic has already been submitted as part of your application and approved by the program committee, the question is really what part of this research will prove to be the most useful as a poster in this setting. In general, the audience will be interested in your application of methodologies (broadly defined) to some data-analytic problem. No matter what is presented, don't be afraid to highlight areas that are not totally worked out, since this is exactly where you might get the most benefit from feedback.
In all cases, your poster should have a title, an abstract, and whatever additional information is useful to get across to us what your research involves. That can be short pieces of text~brief discussion of the theoretical background or lists of hypotheses you are testing~and tables or graphs. Keep it simple, but make sure your poster gets your research across in a brief and effective manner. You might prepare a short (five to ten minute) verbal presentation which you can give to people who want to be "talked" through your research. The amount of feedback you will generate will be directly proportionate to how effectively you present your work in your poster.
What is the format? Administrative details to be announced. But plan on having your poster displayed in a conference room for an extended period of time. And plan on standing next to it at a designated time for from 1 1/2 to 3 hours. In the "poster room" will be a place for you to set up your poster; then throughout some period meeting participants will circulate through the poster room looking at the posters. At a designated time we will have refreshments and you will be asked to be available near your poster so participants can have the opportunity to stop by and talk with you about your work. Afterwards, you may take your poster down.
Again, this is not meant to be a high-stress affair. The participants in the methodology meetings have long expressed a great deal of interest in getting to know the other participants better, both personally and intellectually. The poster session at the upcoming meeting should help us all meet that goal.
If you have any questions at all about the poster session, do not hesitate to contact directly: Mike Ward.
