Category: Meetings (Page 1 of 3)

Poster Tips for Humanities Conference Posters

by Stephanie Krom

In March, I attended my first professional conference, the National Council on Public History Annual Conference, as a graduate student. I went to the NCPH Conference in Monterey, CA to present a poster inspired by my work with incorporating African American history into small public history institutions.

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With my poster at the poster session.

When I was making my poster, I tried to find resources to help me plan the layout of the poster, but I found that most of what is available on the web relates to science posters, not humanities posters. This list is designed to help students who are creating and presenting a poster for a humanities conference and comes out of my experience designing my own poster as well as observations made during the poster session I participated in.

To start, the easiest program to use to make your poster is Microsoft Power Point. However, it is important to note that you will need to custom size your document to a poster size (typically 48 x 36) before beginning your design process. Rice University has good instructions available for how to create a poster in Power Point here: http://library.rice.edu/services/dmc/guides/graphics/poster-ppt

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The poster I presented at the National Council on Public History conference.

Use subtle color. Color can help a poster stand out from the crowd, and it can also serve to differentiate ideas. The best posters are the ones that use a subdued and consistent color palette made up of a maximum of three or four colors. My poster used a yellow-tan as the background color, a blue-green as the title and heading color, and black as the main text color.
Pro tip: Remember that your color should not clash with any images you include.

Organize it like a paper. In a humanities paper, there is generally an abstract, a “main idea,” and a summary conclusion. I have found that the best way to organize a poster is to follow this format. A short abstract of 3-5 sentences will help lay out your thesis. The “main idea” should take up the middle section of the poster and should be the largest. A short conclusion will serve to tie up loose ends and propose ideas for future research.
Pro tip: A lot of people also include a bibliography to suggest resources for further study.

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Use 1-2 relevant images. Including images will help your poster look attractive, and they can also be a great way of illustrating a point or showing an example. However, too many images will just be confusing. Stick to one or two images. Make sure that the images you choose add something important to the poster rather than just supplement existing text.
Pro tip: This advice may not apply if you are doing a presentation on a heavily-visual topic.

Imagine your poster bigger.  Conference posters are generally printed at 48 x 36, which is really big. Your poster will not look the same on the computer screen or when printed on 8 ½ x 11 paper. Although you should not overwhelm the poster with text, don’t be afraid to use a little more text than looks natural on the computer screen. When the poster is printed out at full size, it will look much less crowded.
Pro tip: Change the Power Point document into a PDF or JPEG format before you send it to the printer in order to prevent loss and make the file smaller.

Practice an elevator pitch. The poster session is basically two hours of people asking you to summarize your poster in a few minutes. During my poster session, I spoke to at least 20 different people. It is crucial to have at least a rough 1-minute “elevator pitch” which summarizes your poster that you can start with every time someone new says, “so tell me about your poster…”
Pro tip: The “elevator pitch” should be a jumping-off point for further conversation.

Put supplementary materials online. Supplementary materials can enhance your poster presentation and allow the conversation to continue after the poster session. I created a few additional materials, such as a “Suggested Readings” list and an “About Me” page with my contact info. I uploaded these things, along with a digital copy of the poster, to a public Dropbox.
Pro tip: Make a QR Code with the URL of the Dropbox and print it directly on the poster so people can scan the code and view the materials after the session.

Tweet about your poster with the conference hashtag. Make sure people know where you are in the conference center and what you’re presenting on by tweeting about it using the conference hashtag. A couple of quick tweets can help spread the word and encourage people with interest in the subject to check out your poster.
Pro tip: Twitter can also help you engage with interested people who couldn’t make it to the conference.

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Above all else, have fun at your poster presentation! Prepare, participate, and share your experiences with your peers.

Conference Tips for Graduate Students

by Stephanie Krom

In March, I attended my first professional conference, the National Council on Public History Annual Conference, as a graduate student. I went to the NCPH Conference in Monterey, CA to present a poster inspired by my work with incorporating African American history into small public history institutions. At the NCPH Conference, I had the opportunity to network with fellow graduate students and public history professionals and to hear from on-the-ground public historians about the pitfalls, triumphs, and issues currently facing those who work in the field.

Although the NCPH Conference was a success for me, there are things I learned along the way and things I plan to do differently at my next conference. I encourage every graduate student to attend at least one professional conference during your time at graduate school, ideally as a presenter. It is a valuable learning and networking experience. My experience at the NCPH Conference has inspired me to create this list of conference tips for graduate students.

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A conference “selfie” with my poster.

Bring business cards. NYU Copy & Print Center will print business cards for graduate students with your Program Director’s permission. Before you attend a conference, have professional business cards printed. Hand out your business cards to people who you have meaningful conversations with during the conference, and don’t forget to take their card too.
Pro tip: If you do receive other people’s business cards, it is a good idea to follow-up on your conversation after the conference is over through a quick email or tweet.

Apply for NYU travel funding. NYU has funding available for students to attend conferences, particularly students who have been accepted as presenters. The Student Senator’s Council offers Conference Funding Awards, GSAS has a Dean’s Student Travel Grant Program, and the Archives and Public History program also has several opportunities for conference funding such as the annual Paul H. Mattingly Award. If you’re lost about where to apply for funding, consult your Program Director or ask the NYU Center for Student Activities, Leadership, & Service.
Pro tip: The conference you are attending might also offer scholarships or travel grants for graduate students.

Sign up for a workshop. Many conferences offer intensive workshops, which usually take place a day or two before the official conference begins. These workshops are generally on a very specific topic and offer participants the opportunity to explore this narrow topic in great depth. I learned that workshops can be a great networking opportunity as well as a learning opportunity. They also offer a good opportunity to get comfortable with the style and content of the conference hosts so that you can hit the ground running when the official conference begins.
Pro tip: Most workshops cost money, but conferences often have scholarships for graduate students.

Participate in the mentor/mentee program. Most professional organizations have mentor/mentee programs designed to connect graduate students and young professionals with seasoned professionals within the field. At the NCPH Conference, mentors and mentees were able to meet each other at a separate reception on the first night of the conference. Many of the pairs went out to lunch the next day to talk further. I didn’t participate, but I heard from fellow conference-goers that the mentors were an incredibly valuable resource.
Pro tip: Sign-up usually happens a month or two ahead of time, so plan early and search the conference website for directions on how to participate.

Don’t attend every session. Here’s the big secret that the professionals don’t tell you: It’s okay to not go to a session at all every now and then. Conferences are exhausting. You are going to be given a lot of content to think about. Attend several sessions, but don’t wear yourself out. I find that I get more out of a conference when I allow myself time to process information and don’t get too obsessed with attending everything. This can also be a great time to have conversations and build relationships with people at the conference.
Pro tip: Review the conference program ahead of time to scope out which sessions interest you.

Participate in an activity. The NCPH Conference offered several locally-based activities such as walking tours, a trip to a local attraction, and peer group lunches. I skipped a session on one morning in favor of a conference-promoted walking tour of Historic Monterey. It was great to get out of the Convention Center for a morning – I got some fresh air, I learned about the history of Monterey, and I made connections with the people who were on the tour with me. I even met a few graduate students that I ended up chatting with about future collaborations.
Pro tip: It isn’t “cheating” to take a step out of the Convention Center every once in a while!

Tweet! Conferences often have a hashtag that participants can use to tweet throughout the conference. The NCPH hashtag was #ncph2014. This hashtag started to get used a few weeks before the conference as people prepared and it continues to show up every now and then with people’s follow-up ideas. During the conference, many people live-tweeted sessions, shared interesting ideas, or proposed a lunch meetup through Twitter. I live-tweeted one session, which really helped me parse out the interesting ideas from the session and summarize them, and also created a forum for conversation with people who were not in the room.
Pro tip: Even if you don’t feel like live-tweeting yourself, follow the hashtag on Twitter – you never know what information you might find!

Above all else, have fun at your conference! Prepare, participate, and share your experiences with your peers when you return to NYU.

Nicole Greenhouse’s Blog: Attending the Society of American Archivists’ 2013 Annual Meeting

Thanks to the generosity of the Mattingly Award, I was able to go and present a student poster, “Applying DACS to Tamiment’s Web Archiving Program” and make my first trip to both New Orleans and the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists. Over four and a half days, I got to explore NOLA, socialize with other archivists from all over the country, and learn and talk about one of my favorite archival topics, web archiving. At Tamiment, I have spent the better part of two and a half years working on their Web Archiving Project, capturing labor unions and left activism websites for future research use. Tamiment has always sought to collect ephemeral documents relating to the Left, and most contemporary ephemera is now found on the web.  So naturally, my first SAA was going to revolve around web archiving.

Nicole Greenhouse beside her poster “Applying DACS to Tamiment’s Web Archiving Program”

After a day and a half of sightseeing, I attended the first ever Web Archiving Roundtable meeting at SAA. It was amazing to hear about the different projects being started, the difficulties of starting a project, and seeing the large turnout for the roundtable meeting (especially since it was at the same time as the ArchivesSpace roundtable meeting). It inspired me to join the Web Archiving Best Practices Committee/Toolbox.

I also attended a Web Archiving Service (WAS, the service used by Tamiment) users meeting. I was able to meet with other users to hear how they use the service, as well as to meet with the good people from WAS and give constructive feedback about the service.  I attended an interesting session about web archiving collection development policies and spent many hours meeting others interested in web archiving, both while presenting my poster and during the conference in general. Chela, Tamiment’s head, even gave a shout out to our Occupy Wall Street web collections during her presentation!

All in all, it was a great trip and I learned so much about the archival community and what is new and up and coming in the profession. I am already excited about next year!

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