
Pauling, scientific posters on the go - couac
https://tailordev.fr/blog/2017/10/04/le-lab-6-pauling-poster-sharing-mobile-app/
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ams6110
It would also be nice if someone built a layout app for scientific posters.
I'm not sure why but the prevailing approach seems to be to cram absolutely as
much text and graphic content as you can onto the poster, with no line spacing
or margins. They are absolutely unreadable.

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julienchastang
Having just gone down this road, here is the tech stack I used for putting
together a scientific conference paper: emacs / org-mode / beamer /
beamerposter.sty. I had to do a bit of reverse engineering from tex back to
org-mode to determine the proper org-mode properties to have the beamer layout
I wanted -- if that makes any sense. I also poked around in ox-beamer.el. In
addition, I used Omnigraffle and the Gimp for graphics. I am happy with the
end result, and the original org-mode file is clean and manageable. And, yes,
less verbiage, the better for conference posters.

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iak8god
This sounds interesting. Do you happen to have this up in a repository
somewhere? I would love to use this set of tools, am familiar with beamer for
slide decks, use omni and gimp for graphics, etc ... but currently just end up
making my posters in a powerpoint template, which feels dirty.

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julienchastang
[https://github.com/Unidata/xsede-
jetstream/tree/master/.org/...](https://github.com/Unidata/xsede-
jetstream/tree/master/.org/presentations/gatewayconf2017)

~~~
iak8god
Thanks!

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forapurpose
Would someone in the world of science explain the role of posters and why that
format is so popular? It's seems like there are so many other options - a
video, a talk, a demonstration, an interactive computer screen, an interactive
exhibit, a diorama, a play, etc ...

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jofer
Having given quite a few talks and even more posters, my experience is that
you get to communicate on a _much_ deeper level with a poster. (Note: I'm not
in CS. I'd imagine this varies a lot by field.)

You get absolutely zero feedback and discussion generated from a talk. Maybe a
few questions, but no actual discussion. If you're really, really, really
lucky, someone might track you down or e-mail you later. For the most part,
though, you don't interact with people during a talk.

In contrast, during a poster session, you talk yourself hoarse over three to
twelve hours. You wind up in intense arguments and deep discussions. I've
never seen that happen during talks.

Personally, I find a 12.5 minute talk is a lot more limiting than a poster,
where you'll be talking to people about your work for several hours. Figures
are the main focus of any scientific presentation, and a poster gives a great
format to walk people through the concepts using figures.

That having been said, at the tech conferences I've been to, posters have
always been an afterthought. It's a real shame.

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iak8god
> you get to communicate on a _much_ deeper level with a poster

I used to hate poster sessions until I realized this. Something poster
sessions provide, that other formats like podium talks really fail at, is
pretty fine-grained control over the level of engagement. You can spend five
seconds glancing at a poster, or a minute or two skimming the whole thing; you
can spend a few minutes listening in while the presenter talks a bit about the
work to someone else; you can skim and then ask one or two clarifying
questions; or you can engage the presenter for as long as you're both
interested in discussing.

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couac
Blog post and app co-author here. We'll publish the app to the stores ASAP. In
the meantime, if you want to try it as a beta tester (android at least, iOS I
do not remember if that works with buddybuild), then you can email us:
hello@tailordev.fr. Thanks!

