Going to a conference and have to print a poster? Here is my tip for doing this as efficiently as possible.
Since my first conference, I have made quite a lot of posters (and printed them all on fabric) The first time this was very time-consuming, but the time I spend per poster has decreased over time. My new record is from the last conference. I had scheduled the task of creating the poster on my calendar – by default all events are one hour long. But by the end of the hour, I had not only made the poster, I had also already ordered it from my favorite vendor. All I had to do was wait for the poster to arrive.
As a disclaimer, I do not have the best posters, so if you want to win the best poster award, this is probably not the advice for you. But my posters do the job. So far my experience is that it’s more important how I talk about my research while I’m at the poster. That’s 20% of the work that achieves 80% of the result. The poster can fill up the 80% of work that achieves the other 20% – with all the other things we need to be doing (writing?) the decision on not spending too much time on it is not so difficult.
My “secret” is to use the same LaTeX template and the same structure for every poster. The template takes care of the layout and doesn’t let the poster get too crowded, and the structure guides me in what content I need to add.
I’m sharing two zip files with source files for my posters – one with a TU Delft, one with a TU Eindhoven template. When I was at Erasmus Medical Center, I could not find a LateX template, so I modified the TU Delft one to use different logos and colors. These templates were not originally made by me but allow modifying/sharing as long as the copyright notice is included. Please do the same if using the templates.
Cheplygina et al – Characterizing Multiple Instance Datasets (Poster, TU Delft template)
Cheplygina et al – Exploring Similarity of Medical Image Datasets (Poster, TU Eindhoven template)