Notes for those giving a poster

Posters will be allocated a slot in one of the two poster sessions, and presenters will be 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 18th May at 12noon UK time)

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). You will therefore need to be present during your poster session. 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 (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, (i) start a Zoom meeting (with you, and any other co-presenters, as the only participants), and click on the button in Zoom to record the meeting. 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 send it to us. We will be setting up a site for you to upload your video: please do not email it to us. (You will receive the link to the drive by email.) The deadline for uploading videos is: 18th 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. If you have any queries about this, do get in touch. 

If you are looking for inspiration for your video, you could check the videos that people came up with last year. They are available on the 28mfm website (look for: videos from poster session 1, 2 and 3 - those are the collated videos that we showed at the start of the three poster sessions last year).

Each poster will be allocated a channel on the 29mfm Discord site. We will be asking you to upload your poster in advance to your Discord channel and we also intend to post 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 post more information about how to use Discord here soon (don't worry if you don't know Discord - it is very easy and intuitive to use). We will be closing the 29mfm 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 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 29mfm for non-presenters is now closed as we have no more places.

All those who are registered for the 29mfm will be sent the Zoom link for each day of the conference (via the 29mfm mailing list and the 29mfm Discord server), about an hour before the start of each day.