The theme at NN this week has been popularity and trying to get attention. Always one to charge after a bandwagon, demanding to be let on board, I thought I would chime in.
Even better, there are two bandwagons I can try not to be pushed off. Whilst he’s enjoying himself in Norfolk, Bora’s blog has leapt into action and produced a post on posters. This is too good an opportunity to miss, so I’m reprising the most popular post from my previous place.
Last summer ESEB(European Society for Evolutionary Biology) had its bi-annual bash in Uppsala. Chris, from here in Helsinki, had booked to attend, and was due to present a poster. But he decided at the last moment he couldn’t be bothered. Some of his colleagues (now at different levels of ex-friendship) decided this was too good an opportunity to miss. They created their own poster for his slot, and duly put it up.
After I had blogged about it, I sent the link to PZ Myers, who kindly linked to it. In terms of getting visitors, this was a great success with over 3000 hits for that post, or about 1000 more than for any other of my posts. Disappointingly though, I only got 2 comments. Even worse, there were 13 on the Pharyngula post. Let’s see if I do any better this time.
This has all the fetaures of a good poster: it grabs the attention with a good picture, the text is big enough to be read from a distance, and the conclusions are clearly stated. Did it win a poster price at the ESEB meeting?
Now I know what we can put up at the upcoming ESHG conference, where we submitted an abstract but I don’t really want to attend because we’re going to bring this poster two weeks later to a better-attended and more relevant conference. I know Martin would disapprove
but my postdoc needs practice making oral presentations in English, so we submitted to both conferences, and got a poster in both. Sigh. Choices had to be made. This is a real problem with cross-disciplinary work.
Would Chris’ ex-friends lend that poster, or do we have to come up with a female version? (This might increase attendance, especially if it’s not my own torso in question.)
Seriously, I consider that we need to send the poster with the other colleagues from lab who are going, but the least we can do is make it easy to contact us for questions. So, a little card goes up with an e-mail address.
Mea culpa.
I’m afraid this is all just a bit too meta for a Sunday evening, Bob.
Something beginning with m anyway, Jenny.
Martin – I belive it was expelled.
Heather – unfortunately the poster “disappeared” before Chris’ friends could pick it up. If anyone knows what happened to it, or were in the vicinity etc. etc. So you’ll have to create your own I’m afraid. You could always put it up in the space of someone else who hasn’t brought a poster.
Excellent poster prank!
You seem to be doing better with the comments this time. A PZ-linked post on my other blog is still my most-commented one, but it was nothing to the comments he got on his thread! I suppose people don’t like to leave comments on unfamiliar blogs…