Notes for those giving a poster

Posters have been allocated a slot in one of the three poster sessions, and presenters have been asked to prepare both:

a poster-like text-based presentation and
a very short (2 minute) recorded video (to be submitted in advance of the conference, by 19th May at 12noon UK time)

You will need to upload your video to the 28mfm google drive. Please use your surname as the file name for the video. You will receive a link to the google drive by email (we will not be posting the link here). Please be sure to check that you get the link in an email from the 28mfm email list. If not, get in touch right away (patrick.honeybone@ed.ac.uk).

The video is intended as a kind of 'advert' for your research (you won't be able to say much, and should simply aim to intrigue the audience about why your work is interesting - don't try to give all your results and/or to fully cover all of the issues that you are interested in). We intend to collate all the videos for each poster session and to play them all to everyone at the start of the relevant poster session (we expect that this will take around 20-30 minutes). Each poster presenter will then be allocated a Zoom room for discussion, as at a normal poster session (we expect for this slot to last around an hour). The videos are intended to get the audience to come and see you in your Zoom room to ask you more about your poster.

There is no one single way to produce a good poster. The important things are that there is not very much text, that it is easily readable, and that it sets out the main points that you want to argue for (and any data sets) clearly. Our advice is: include diagrams or other graphics as they can be easier for an audience to take in (people will see your poster during your video but will also be able to download it, to look at during the poster session and at other times during the conference). You could produce one big poster or have it spread over a few slides (but, please: a very few slides if you do this - 3-5 slides is our recommendation, with 5 the absolute maximum). During your poster session, you will be asked to wait in your Zoom room as conference participants come in and out to ask you questions about them.

We recommend that you use Zoom to produce the video. This is free and easy. If you would like to use a different system that you are familiar with to produce your video, that's completely fine, but we would like you to send us your video in mp4 format. Zoom produces mp4 format videos by default. If you use Zoom to produce a video while sharing your screen to show your poster, you should get a video with a large image of your poster and a small image of your face. If you would prefer not to record your face, that's fine - you can just turn off your camera. But we do recommend showing your poster during your video. You should be able to focus in on parts of it as you speak while sharing your screen (if you have one large sheet for your poster), or to click through your slides if that is how you are presenting. To use Zoom to produce a video, you really just need to (i) be signed in to a Zoom account, (ii) start a Zoom meeting (with you, and any other co-presenters, as the only participants), (iii) start sharing your screen, and (iv) click on the button in Zoom to record the meeting. When you are finished, end the meeting, and you should receive your video directly (or an email about how to get it). There is some advice about this from Zoom's website here. If you are not familiar with this, we recommend trying it a few times and seeing what happens before you record your video. Once you have recorded your video, you will need to upload it to the 28mfm google drive. (You will receive the link to the drive by email.) Please do not email your video to us. The deadline for uploading videos is: 19th May at 12noon UK time. We will then host all videos on Youtube, in order to link to them from Discord (see below) and will produce the collated video to play at the poster session. The videos on Youtube will not be publicly discoverable, and we will delete all videos from Youtube on around 4th June. If you have any queries about this, do get in touch. 

Each poster has been allocated a channel on the 28mfm Discord site. You should upload your poster in advance of the conference to your Discord channel (see the 28mfm Discord notes about this). We have already posted a link to your video to your Discord channel. This will allow conference attendees to go back to your presentation (or even to check it in advance of your poster session). Discord channels allow chat-like interaction, so this could also allow for interaction about a poster after your poster session. We will be closing the 28mfm Discord site a few weeks after the conference (so no material posted there will be available permanently).

Registration

All those who have had an abstract accepted for the conference (and therefore now appear on the programme) have been automatically registered for the conference. You therefore will not need to register separately. If you would like to be unregistered, or to use different details for registration, please get in touch (patrick.honeybone@ed.ac.uk).

Registration for the 28mfm is now closed as we have no more places.

All those who are registered for the 28mfm will be sent information about how we will be using Zoom and Discord in the days just before the conference.