Chemical Forums
Specialty Chemistry Forums => Chemical Education and Careers => Topic started by: kriggy on May 29, 2015, 04:48:21 PM
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As the title suggests, Im participating in a conference in two weeks with poster presentation. Can anyone give me any advice what to expect?
Im getting very nervous since the chemistry was not working realy well lately and most of my work so far was re-synthesis of already prepared compounds and optimalization of those reactions (which took considerably more time than we expected). I am able to get some new pieces for sure but there is no time for for example biological tests or something like that... :-\
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My feeling about posters at conferences is that they are works in progress. One is grateful for the chance to interact with others and maybe pick up a few new ideas. I would not worry too much about how much I had accomplished.
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My experience is that poster sessions at conferences are great catalyst for starting conversations about a topic you know much about, with many different people. Most of the people you will find you are educating them about your topic and giving a summary of your findings and answering general questions. Then there may be the odd few very knowledgeable professors or experts in the field (on your particular topic) who may ask you much more specific questions and a much richer conversation develops where you will have new insights about your research, think of new methods to test for something you never considered before, and develop new ideas you would never have before.
Then during the time slots you are not presenting your poster, you get to walk around and see all others works and ask them questions. Hopefully you can find some posters about topics similar to your topic so you will be able to get into some good conversation. Generally, I never found anyone to be critical of my poster content, even some where I knew later that certain things were not presented in the best ways, and the criticism would mainly be confined to something like "Did you try doing it that way? That's how I would have approached that". So as mentioned by Babcock_Hall, there is nothing really to be worried about. I think oral presenations at the conferences are much more stressful!!
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Thanks guys. Feels better now ;) I think I was stuck so long at one place without realy getting anything done so it somehow all fell on me
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I've never personally have liked poster session or ever felt I've gotten much out of them. That said, there's certainly nothing to be nervous about. The absolute worst that can happen is that nobody is interested in your poster and they leave you alone. The best that can happen is someone is interested and has a good conversation with you. Poster sessions have a high population of students and other trainees - this is recognized and so science is usually not judged too harshly, even if something is blatantly wrong. This is opposed to an oral presentation, where some obnoxious twits might start up a contentious argument with you during the question phase if they don't like what you're saying.