2021 Annual Meeting Poster Instructions

Poster Session – information for poster presenters

Two poster sessions are planned, for Sept 20, 11:30 AM-12:30 PM Pacific Time, and Sept 22, 11:00 AM-12:00 PM Pacific Time. The sessions will be held in an interactive virtual environment using the gather platform, which allows connecting via video chat to discuss your research, provide a space where you can run into old friends or meet new people with new ideas.

This year there are several choices for the poster format: A regular (static) poster, a gif, OR a brief poster talk. Choose wisely.

A regular poster may be a better option to engage in conversation with your colleagues, and there is now a pointing-feature in gather. A gif animation can help you convey a point, but it can be distracting and make the file size balloon. A poster video gives you the option to ensure a certain flow in your presentation, especially if the poster is viewed without you present, but you won’t be able to easily point to certain parts in a discussion.

The poster contributions will be uploaded by the organizers. The deadline for submitting you poster will be Sept 17.

Please submit your poster as png, jpeg, or gif file (<5MB) of your poster, or your poster video (as file or as link to hosting platform) no later than Sept 17. Submission instructions were sent with the confirmation email.

Details for static poster or gif:

  • We don’t have a required poster template.
  • When attendees walk through the virtual poster room, a strip of the top ~1000 pixels of the poster are shown in a small preview screen when it is within range. As poster author, you may wish to optimize the top area to provide a useful preview and draw attendees to your poster.
  • New: gather.town now has a presenter mode, allowing to click on a part of a poster with your mouse, and this click will be visible to everyone else who is viewing the poster. Together with the zoom-in feature, this can help you walk viewers through your poster.
  • Send us a jpeg or png file, maximum size is 5 MB. If you can, make the file smaller. Smaller files load faster on most computers/for people with slower internet. This makes it easier for people to look at your work.
  • If you want to include a simple animation in your static poster, consider a gif, but be mindful of the file size! https://ezgif.com/maker has some useful options to create a gif from several image files, and also lots of methods for customizing and compressing the gif file (not an official endorsement)
  • If sending a png, avoid transparent background
  • If you use Powerpoint to create your poster, use the built-in export to png.
  • If this is your first poster ever, have a look at common advice for scientific posters. Most of the basic design principles still applies in this virtual conference. One thing that may be easier, is judging the appropriate size of figures and text. If it’s easily readable on your screen, then it will hopefully look the same on everyone else’s screen (although the virtual poster session allows viewers to zoom in, if needed).

Details for poster video:

  • We don’t have a required poster video template.
  • When attendees walk through the virtual poster room past your poster, a thumbnail image of the linked video is shown as a preview.
  • We recommend that you stick to 3-5 minutes maximum.
  • The video will be linked as an embedded frame in the virtual poster session.
  • The video needs to be hosted on an external platform. This can be your lab’s YouTube channel or similar. It can also be on google drive, but the sharing settings need to allow anyone with the link to see it.
  • If you wish, we can host the video on the AmeriFlux YouTube channel.