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[galactic_hedgehog]

Good points, Shrek.  Many people, especially when doing a poster for the first time, put too much in the way of words, making the poster too cluttered.  Other tricks include using sans-serif fonts for easier reading and not having clashing colors for text and background.

Cranefly, since you've never done a poster, let alone one for a science conference, you might want to get some advice from someone at your school who's in that particular scientific discipline.  Each one will be somewhat different.  Also find out what size and orientation the poster should be.  Most are portrait, but you'll find some places want landscape.

My CV has about 2:1 posters to talks, all entered under "Presentations."  Some of those are invited, some are where one of the co-authors was the main researcher/presenter.  Some of the smaller conferences are posters due to the fact that almost all the presentations in those are posters, except for one or two talks per day.  Those are the types of conferences where things are really done, with lots of talk about possible collaborations during the poster sessions and during drinking sessions (not that they're not simultaneous).  The main conference in my field is so big (~15,000) that by far most of the presentations are posters (they also enforce a one presentation per first author rule, unless you also have an invited presentation). 

As for T&P, I am currently at a CC, so anything I have looks good, but given the nature of the conferences I go to (and used to go to, when I was a postdoc) most of them would be expected to be posters, so I don't think it would be a problem. Since they are all subjected to the same criteria for acceptance and go together on the CV (standard in my field) there's really to distinguish between them (well, you can look carefully at the abstract number, which will tell you if you know how to read it).  There are people out there who are of the opinion that poster < talk, and might think less of posters, but what's important (IMHO) is that you're doing the work and presenting it to your colleagues, and (hopefully) it's all leading to quality publications.

[drspouse]

In my softish science field, several conferences now have very limited paper presentation options - one pushes all the paper rejects to posters, and two have recently switched to symposium-only papers (and in one case, few of those) and everyone else has to do a paper.  We had a symposium switched to a poster session and as I was discussant that was a bit, er, challenging! But I took the opportunity to put in some work in progress in more detail than I'd normally do.

I had another poster session at the same conference and 30 handouts were taken in the first TEN minutes.  At 8am (though the only time that didn't clash with talks). I have just finished writing the fastest paper ever on that topic - I'm afraid someone else will nick my idea!

[chaud]

I'm an introvert and find posters exhausting because of the social aspect and the necessity to repeat your 3 m talk over and over. But, I do get the chance to talk to a lot of people and make contacts I might not otherwise. As for numbers, at ours, we made 150 handouts and they were gone within the first 30 m, so we clearly had a large audience (even though some take extras to give to peers).

Ditto what everyone said -- less is more in terms of text. Better to print a large poster than a bunch of letter sized powerpoints. Use at least 24 pt font. Include visuals. Include your name, contact info (just email is fine), and make your title prominent and larger. A one-page handout is enough. I do not give out copies of my manuscripts, especially if they have not been published yet.

[locutus]

I think this is another one of those things that depend on your field. In my area talks are definitely the adult table. That's not to say that many people don't do posters as well, but they are often seen as secondary and are generally less competitive to get (if at all).

One advantage to a poster session is getting to talk casually with people about your work. Once you've given them the 3-min run down you can talk about new things or future directions, talk about possible collaborations, etc. One conference I go to does a good job of putting similar posters near each other. So there will be 10-12 researcher in my sub-area all hanging out together talking shop and exchanging ideas.

[science_expat]

I agree with everything Galactic Hedgehog has said although it's definitely discipline and conference specific.

All the great and the good come to the poster sessions in my field and you're much more likely to have a chance to talk to them at your poster (or theirs!) than you are following a talk or over a beer.

They are more work but also more rewarding. And absolutely not the kiddie table in my hard physical science!

[johnr]

My very first conference presentation was a talk, presented over twenty years ago. Ouch, time does fly!  Over the years I've given mostly talks, in fact I didn't give my own poster presentation until about five years ago (although my students have done many).  Lately, though, I've grown to like giving poster presentations quite a bit. Usually, our talks are twenty minutes long and that includes time for the Q and A.  Then, you're rushed off the podium and the next speaker gets up...on and on...it all seems to get lost in the mad shuffle of multiple concurrent sessions and I'm lucky to talk to one or two people during the inter-session about my work, or their work.

With the poster session, I've had many more, longer and meaningful discussions about my research.  In a typical poster session, I'll speak with dozens and dozens of people...never so with a talk.  Also the nature of some of my work, spatial modeling, lends itself to posters since the products are often big, colorful, and detailed maps that people like to gaze for more than 20 seconds.

Finally, in my home society, the poster session is definitely not the "kiddie table".  In fact I'll never forget seeing the grand old sage of our discipline standing proudly in front of her poster a few years back, holding court surrounded by adoring fans for the entire two hour session. Perhaps 15 years ago it was true that the poster presentations were mostly from students, but we've made a real push over the past decade, as our society has grown, to emphasize the poster session, much to our benefit.