The Anti-Social Network

Five or ten years ago, conferences were bigger. Not in terms of the number of attendees, but they were physically bigger. They were hosted in huge halls (the size rock bands would play), full of people, and some of the halls were devoted to one thing: posters. However, conferences are increasingly turning to e-posters: a bank of computers on a table where delegates can view a presenter’s short slide deck, or some small ‘pods’ – a small seated area where somebody gives give a PowerPoint presentation on a large TV screen, during a short, pre-allocated time slot. Here is another point of view. I ask myself: are these actually “posters”? They seem to me to be more like mini-lectures, and I think we need to consider what is lost from moving from physical posters to e-posters.