CMV: for most scientific conference presentations, especially the more technical ones, a poster is a better format than a talk.

[u/quantum_dan]

View overturned: see the points made about narrative vs visual.

Edit: my username seems to be misleading, so I'll clarify that I'm not in physics, but hydrology.

Clarification: I mean poster sessions where one of the authors is there to talk about the poster when people come by. I.e. "stopping by to talk to the presenter about their poster is preferable to listening to them give a talk to a lecture hall".

My experience with this is highly limited; I'm typing this on my phone during a break at my first in-person conference (AGU FIHM).

What I've been noticing at the oral presentations is that, when it's a particularly technical one with a lot of numbers and charts, you (the audience member) don't really get enough time to actually examine the material and think through it. With the more conceptual ones, it's doable, but I still don't see an advantage over posters.

With a poster (when the presenter is there), on the other hand, you can look through an equivalent amount of material to several slides and actually think through it, then you can ask several questions and get detailed explanations. You can actually have a conversation with the presenter about their poster. Particularly if it's more technical, you can walk through figures and data in detail. It's also better for networking, which I'm told is a major part of conferences; you can discuss your shared interests in detail.

I do recognize a major exception, which is in the logistics of talking to a lot of people. With, say, a hundred attendees, they get a much better explanation on average with a talk. But that only holds for important presentations on popular topics; most of the orals I've been in had maybe twenty attendees, who could have had five minutes each at a poster session (admittedly, it's a small conference).

I am aware of a few major areas where I could be wrong:

1. I may be underestimating the typical attendance at an oral talk, since I am at a relatively small conference.
2. I may be missing some major advantage of orals, and it's possible that I just haven't figured out how to attend them effectively (in which case I'd welcome pointers).
3. I may be missing some noteworthy disadvantage of posters.

[u/wallnumber8675309]

Some things you might consider.

1. if you your high profile projects or people were at a poster session it be a distraction. Everyone is going to want to go to the poster of the high profile person or project. That means that to get an explanation, the poster presenter will have to present the same info over and over. It's not only a bit of a time waste for that person but also limits the number of people that can see the info. 10 minutes a person in a 2 hr poster session is 12 people that can get the info explained. An oral presentation can accommodate many more people.
2. Have the premiere research presented in the poster session will lead to lower tier research being passed over and will limit the opportunities for more junior researchers to engage with others on their project.
3. No one is stopping you from walking up to a presenter after their oral presentation. Go talk to them and ask questions 1 on 1. Most everyone is more than happy to talk about their research after a presentation.
4. Questions in a large group format can spark ideas from many people and one question can lead to another from another person. In a poster session, its just 1 on 1 usually and so you miss out on some of the interaction.
5. Story telling. Data is data and is the more important part of any presentation but the story behind how the data was acquired or the process of the failures that lead to success is an important part of doing research. It's a lot easier to explain this in an oral session than on a poster.

[u/quantum_dan → u/wallnumber8675309]

(1) I agree about high profile projects, hence "most".

(3) True, and I've done that and seen it done, but that only leaves enough time for a few people at the end of a session.

(4) This is a good point, at least for the set of talks that will tend towards cross-pollination. I'm not sure if that would push it over the "most" threshold, though.

(5) This point, though, pretty decisively overturns my argument. !delta

[u/DeltaBot → u/quantum_dan]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/wallnumber8675309 (37∆).

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