By Zen Faulkes
Typically, posters are “pull” communication: someone has to decide to come to your poster. But some conferences try to add a “push” element to posters, so that some information about posters is put in front of the conference audience in general.
There are multiple ways to do this (e.g., “Guided poster tours”), but one format seems to be common. This goes under a variety of names, including “lightning talks,” “flash talks,” and “poster pitches.” The British Geriatric Society calls these the “President’s Poster Round.” Classy.
Poster presenters get up in front of one of the conference’s main venues, such as an auditorium or ballroom used for keynote presentations, and have to give a short summary of the research presented on their poster.
I haven’t been at a conference where this was done, but I have reports that short poster talks like these reach back to the 1990s. And it’s no surprise they have been done for decades: people love them.
Rita Strack wrote:
"As a person who never manages to make it to all the posters I want to see, I also LOVE poster flash talks."
Anwesha Sarkar (in a now deleted X post) wrote:
"Always fun to listen to 1 min pitch session."
Axel Huebl (another deleted X post) called them:
"Better than any movie trailer. So exciting!"
Christoph Dellago (deleted X post) wrote (emphasis added in next quotes):
"I always enjoy these speed talks of poster presenters at conferences. Often they are original, witty, and informative(.)"
Chris Jackson wrote:
"I’ve seen this at several conferences and it’s always been excellent(.)"
Tuuli Lappalainen wrote:
"Poster lightning talks is a fantastic format that every non-ginormous conference should have."
And the benefit is not just the adrenaline rush of hearing a lot of ideas at once. They can improve networking at the poster session itself. Wiebke Jahr wrote:
"You already know the face behind the poster. You can open with “I’m curious about x you said” instead of “would you walk me through your poster”. The short format gives stage to more speakers & topics."
How can you crush your flashy lightning poster pitch talk? These are factors to consider.
How long do you have?
When I say, “short,” how short? It varies.
The top end, the longest talk, seems to be three minutes. One example included SPIE Medical Imaging.
Some, like EGU, give two minutes.
A one minute pitch may be the mode. This was how long AARC, the Polish Evolutionary Conference, Munin Conference. RNA Therapeutics conference, Annual CDT Molecules meeting (post deleted) gave speakers.
The Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing (PASC) conference gave poster presenters a mere 30 seconds (post deleted).
And the shortest, from Oded Rechavi:
Conference presentation formats:
45 minutes keynotes
12 minutes invited speakers
3 minutes selected from abstract
1 minute flash talks instead of poster
16.7 milliseconds subliminal stimuli
But maybe Oded isn’t serious about that last one.
Photo by Paleotrails.
Developing a summary
Regardless, it is not a lot of time. You must be concise. But if you have created a good poster, you should have already been through this exercise! You would have cut your project down to a few hundred words to show on your poster and maybe for an abstract. You would have cut your project to a sentence to create your poster title. If you have done a good job on those, a minute should feel like loads of time to tell people enough to get them curious.
If you have not been through this exercise - or even if you have - it is worth revisiting your summary. An abstract may be too long for a pitch, and a title may be too short. Your first attempt to summarize your project may not be your best attempt.
ABT graphic from Anja Smykowski.
The best tool I have found for creating a short summary is the “And, but, therefore” (ABT) format, popularized by Randy Olson and colleagues. You take two facts (joined by “and”), followed by a problem (“but”), and a consequence (“therefore”). This allows you to drill down to maybe as short as a sentence while providing a narrative, rather than just facts in isolation.
For example, here are three movies summarized in ABT format:
A scrawny kid doesn’t fit in and is a disappointment to his father, but he uses his skill to capture a dragon, therefore earning him the respect of his community. (How to Train Your Dragon)
An evil empire has built a superweapon and plans to use it to enforce their tyranny, but a princess steals the plans, therefore giving the rebellion a chance to cripple the empire. (Star Wars)
Twins move back to their hometown and start a business, but vampires attack on opening night, therefore forcing the brothers to fight to save themselves and everyone around them. (Sinners)
These are just quick examples. They are not necessarily the best versions of ABT sentences for those movies. Large works can be summarized in multiple ways.
I’ve done this with many poster presenters. When I ask them to talk about what their poster is about, it often takes a few minutes. I don’t think many of them believe me when I say they should be able to summarize their poster in a sentence. Then I do it using the ABT format. And I can usually see the expression on their faces indicating I’ve hit very close to the mark.
Be careful with cliffhangers! While “What will happen next?” is a tested and true way of getting people to come back, it is difficult to develop enough context to create tension in a short talk. For many people, your presentation will be their only exposure to the project, so it can be useful to give them a useful piece of information that they might value even if they can’t get to your poster.
Practice out loud
One of your big advantages with this short talk format is how easy it is to rehearse. You have no excuse not to have rehearsed several times, maybe dozens of times, before you hit the stage.
Think of all the times in the day where you are just waiting around for a minute or two.
Waiting for someone to let you into a Zoom call? Rehearse your talk.
Waiting for someone at a service counter to finish with their current client? Rehearse your talk.
Waiting for your crispy chicken sandwich and fries to be handed over at the drive-through of your favourite guilty pleasure fast food restaurant? Rehearse your talk.
Need to take a bathroom break? Rehearse your talk. (Okay, maybe not in a public restroom. You might sound slightly crazy.)
Once you have rehearsed a few times, time yourself. You should aim for your talk to be shorter than the allotted time, because there are many reasons a talk might run a little longer (microphone problem, flubbed delivery) but few reasons that can make a talk shorter. A good target is to time your talk so it takes up about 80% of your allotted time. If you are allotted a minute, rehearse your talk to run for about 45 to 50 seconds.
You should not need to do a speedrun through your presentation to fit the allotted time. You should probably not sound like the world’s fastest talking person, whose skills were shown in a memorable FedEx commercial.
Are you allowed a slide?
Picture from RNA Therapeutics Institute.
I do not know how different conferences handle visuals for poster pitch sessions, and there is probably much variation. Some might not let you show anything on the screen. Some might project the actual poster; some might give you the chance to submit a slide specifically for the pitch session.
If you can create an original slide, there are two factors to consider.
First, when you have a slide, the temptation is to narrate the slide. We have all had the “Death by PowerPoint” experience of someone reading their slide, and people read faster than you can talk.
Second, there is the possibility of technical failure. What happens if your slide doesn’t project correctly? What if there is a delay in showing the slide? This could eat into your time and throw you off your game.
The fix to both scenarios is to prepare a pitch that you could give on a podcast. Make sure your talk makes sense with no visual aids. If the slide works as it ought to, gesture at it as appropriate.
Edit your slide. Your slide probably has to be simpler than your poster. You may be tempted to squeeze a lot of data and basically give the entire poster in your talk.
Put your poster number on the slide! Since the goal is to get people to come to your poster, a poster number is perhaps the easiest thing for people to write down quickly.
How many people are giving talks, and where are you in that lineup?
You want to motivate your audience to mark down your poster board number, or memorable enough that they will remember both you and your pitch later. This is easier to accomplish if the number of people pitching posters is small. If there are only four or five people giving poster pitches, people are likely to remember you without much effort on your part or theirs.
Unfortunately, it is rarely so easy. The most common number of talks at once was more than ten, according to my own informal online survey. There are eight in a row listed in this program:
Picture from ICIM-5-Vienna-2022.
With so many pitches in rapid succession, the presenters might start to blur together in the audience’s memory. So you need to think about what makes for a memorable pitch.
If you know you are first or last in the poster pitch lineup, you get an advantage. Things that are first or last in a series are the most likely to be remembered.
Photo by Alexander Kmoch showing 1 minute poster pitches at Delft University of Technology.
If you’re in the middle of the pack, what can you do to make yourself more memorable?
First, you have the advantage of your physical appearance. People might remember faces better than projects, especially if many projects were on similar topics. You might consider wearing something that is a little different than typical academic clothes. If you have a great hat, maybe wear the hat during your poster pitch. People will be able to find the hat at the poster session. (If the poster session is on another day than the pitch, this may mean that you do have to commit to wearing the same clothing on different days.)
Second, think about how you can make your verbal presentation different from all the others.
This might be in changing up the pace of delivery. While I cautioned against the speedrun presentation, if you decide to crack out a rapid-fire summary and commit to doing it in a way that is understandable and relevant to the talk, it might stand out. Or you might slow down to deliver just the choicest words with the most emphasis. Some people have delivered their pitches in verse. Or you might try using a prop. If your talk is about birdsong, play a clip of a song from your phone. If your talk is about fish, bring a toy fish.
Third, few things are more memorable than a well timed and well landed joke (if humour is appropriate to the content). If the audience laughs, you’ve won.
Photo by Munin Conference.
In the search to do something different, distinctive, and memorable, there is a risk that someone will grumble that presenters should not be gimmicky. This is a fair comment. These talks are being given in an academic conference, not a stand-up comedy nightclub or fashion catwalk.
The goal is not to pull a stunt for the sake of pulling a stunt. The goal is to find something in tune with your style and relevant to the content that also happens to stick with an audience.
With good preparation, you should be able to bring more people to your poster. And even those people who don't come to your poster can leave with a better idea of who you are and what you do. Good luck!
Bonus!
I am sure there are people who think that this format is trivial and that nobody has enough time in a minute or two to learn anything or even take notes. Well, if Alex Cagan can turn flashy lightning poster pitches into art, surely you can jot down a few poster numbers!
From 2017.
From 2023 AGBT meeting.
Also from 2023, unsure of meeting.
Zen Faulkes
Biologist who studies crustaceans, brains, behaviour, evolution, metascience, and conference posters.
Zen Faulkes is a biologist who has both seen – and personally made – many conference posters that could be much better. He began writing the Better Posters blog in 2009, which led to the book of the same name in 2021. He currently lives in the United States.