Innovative Meetings
Revolutionary Digital Posters
innovative meetings
Let's take a trip back to grade school. Remember how many posters you created - drawing, coloring, gluing - for class projects and presentations? j Fast forward to the present. You are now communicating with sophisticated meeting attendees and conveying detailed, often technical, information. The old-fashioned paper poster presentation just won't cut it. ePosters is a revolutionary, all-digital poster creation and viewing system that allows meeting attendees to view posters at on-site workstations, or log in anywhere else by using a Web connection. Information is brought to life with visuals and rich multi-media content such as videos, animations, or sound files. Quick-search options take viewers straight to relevant topics.
ePosters is extremely easy to use, for both viewers and presenters. The technology works for any meeting, but is ideal for shows that have 200-plus posters to be displayed because it saves space and money (labor costs to set up the poster presentations in the meeting facility).
A recent meeting utilizing ePosters had 5,000 poster presentations. If that many posters were physically displayed in halls and rooms, it would have required approximately 100,000 square feet of space - limiting the space left for sessions and events. Setup would have been time-consuming and labor expensive.
Advantages for Meeting Attendees
Having computers set up around the meeting takes up far less space and enables attendees to view the topics at their leisure, using the search engine to find multiple "posters" on a specific topic or by a specific professor. Attendees can stay at one computer station and look up several posters. It's easier on their feet and less time-consuming than roaming the halls to view all the posters.
In addition, viewers can make comments to the poster authors, and make online queries on the system. It also makes follow up a snap. As one attendee said, "I couldn't wait to get the CDs with the PDFs after the meeting. The old way, I would have had to write down notes from the papers that were important to me or take photos of the critical pages. It would have taken a long time."
Advantages for Presenters
Normally presenters have to pay to have their posters produced, but with this system, they incur no cost. They simply create their own Web page with their information, following a very easy-to-use format. They are shown how to lay out text, graphics, movies, and multimedia into a seamless presentation.
The standard submission process includes login and overview of posters to be completed. Submitters enter the poster text in all sections and provide media file (images, video clips) links, fill in personal information, preview, do a final edit, and then notify the meeting sponsor of completion and logout.
Advantages for Meeting Organizers
With ePosters, organizations hosting meetings can make important information available to their members long after the meeting is over. The content presented on site can be accessed online for a user group (using a login). Organizations can also consider setting up a "pay per view use" of the materials after the conference for non-members or those who did not attend the conference.
Using ePosters also opens up a sponsorship opportunity for the on-site display, online database, or CD-ROMs. The sponsor's name remains on the ePoster as long as the ePoster is accessible.
The scientific and medical communities are embracing ePosters, because the technology enables them to offer the latest research in an accessible format. According to one bio-medical organization, "ePosters is like a virtual science convention."
News Feed