POSTER EXPERIMENTATION @TCD Field Research Clinic

Last Friday, the TCD-LATAM-sponsored Field Research Clinic took place in the gorgeous domains of Smathers Library at UF. Students who have returned from the field presented on their results in a poster-session type of event. There were well over 100 people including close to 30 faculty/staff/visiting scholars and the variety of themes covered was stimulating.

I figured that this was my chance to try-out a new poster design that I've been thinking about. After all, you will hardly ever see a more suitable crowd than the TCD community to bounce-off new ideas.  

The poster was composed of three main areas: 

• A primary center area where I put what was arguably the most relevant information; i.e., The problem and Preliminary data.
•  A secondary area on the left, where I put the introduction in few words.
• A third area on the right, where I placed a discussion space, where people could write down ideas, suggestions of comments about trends in my data.

This is the poster

The concept behind the design of this poster was to re-organize the information that I would generally put (Introduction, hypothesis, methods, results, and discussion) so that the main piece of information was right at the center with very few words. If the reader was interested, then he/she could move their attention to other parts of the poster (i.e., Introduction and main questions). Some poster sections were left out (Methods and the classic discussion section). I wanted to bring out a notion that a wonderful professor once told me "posters are about having people to talk to you". 

Overall, the experiment was a success. Most importantly, I got wonderful ideas and comments that people wrote down on my poster. I was surrounded with smart people who had lots of different experiences and I'm happy the poster was able to capitalise on that. I was also fortunate enough to win a prize, so thanks TCD-LATAM!

I also want to acknowledge  TCD and The Rufford Small Grant foundation for their support of my research.

There are a few things I need to remember for next time:

• Bring sharpies instead of pencils. Pencils are great for field work but suboptimal for this task.
• Buy a helium balloon and put it on my poster. That way, when people ask me "where's your poster?" I can reply: "just follow the balloon".
• Always have a notebook close by to write down suggestions by Emilio Bruna. Emilio talks fast and walks even faster. If you think you are going to remember all of his suggestions, you are wrong...so write them down! (thank you Emilio for this suggestions!!)

Next steps? I'll try this design at a larger meeting and see what happens. Stay tuned!