Sunday, May 13, 2007

Poster or Talk?

Which do you prefer? Which is more work? Which is more rewarding?

I used to think that posters were way more labor intensive, but I realized today that for all my previous talk, I already had figures that I just needed to slot into the talk. Having to make them up from the data just for the talk is significantly more effort.

So I don't have time to present more detailed argument for and against each format; I still have a dozen slides to finsih tonight.

3 comments:

James Annan said...

Well talks are certainly held in higher regard generally, and there's the possibility of a huge audience hanging on your every word. But talking to a near-empty and unresponsive room, with half the audience wandering out during the talk and the other half snoring, can hardly be an enjoyable experience (not that I'd know about that other than vicariously, oh no).

A good poster session can be lots of fun. The free wine at the EGU certainly helped! I honestly don't care much one way or the other.

Thermochronic said...

I agree talks are held in higher regard, but I still prefer posters. In general, if I am presenting something at a conference, then I am not yet at the point where I am ready to publish. Posters actually provide an immense amount of feedback, and are therefore informative for both the presenter and the audience. Talks are good when the project is essentially finished.
I've thought for a while that GSA (and perhaps AGU, I haven't attended other conferences) should drastically reduce the number of talks, and increase the number of poster presentations. Most talks I see would have been better posters.

Dr. Lemming said...

One of the really nice things about my Goldschmidt poster was that it contains a data table that is useful for the day-to-day operation of the lab. So by putting it on the wall, I have had handy access to those numbers ever since.