Conferences. Where professionals gather to network with those in their field. It’s an honor to receive an invitation to talk at a conference. Those of course are only given out to the best of the field, who would inspire and teach with a 40 minute presentation. Few researchers are asked for an invited talk.

Everyone else, those relatively mediocre in the field, have to submit an abstract to participate. If accepted, they may get a talk with half the time of an invited talk. Twenty minutes is not long to present years of research. The more prestigious the conference, the less likely one may be accepted into a talk.

You’d be very lucky if your scheduled talk was in the late morning at the middle of the week. Especially if the talk is sandwiched between two invited talks, it would be likely your room is filled with conferees just there to save their seat for the next invited talk. The unlucky would get that awful afternoon time slot on the very last day of the conference, presenting to an empty room.

For everyone else, usually the students or the new people in the field, they’d get a Poster Session. All their research for that topic is smushed onto a 3 foot X 4 foot pieces of thick paper as their presentation.

A smart student would print out their poster at their home university or lab and carry it with them during travel. Rolled up into a tube, and item which counts as a carry-on. Poster sessions are usually done in the evenings, after the esteemed researchers have given their talk, and almost always have alcohol served. This bulky poster, that has the entire student’s life work on it, is hung on a board alongside hundreds of other attendees while the big wigs graze around with a drink in their hand.

The student, the newbie in their field, is standing by their poster. Scared, nervous, and tense while the big wigs are now relieved from the pressures of their own invited presentation and have already started libations.

But poster sessions aren’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s a social experience. The student is exposed to the field, new and anxious to learn. Most importantly, initiating a network with the pros who may one day be a colleague.

The student doesn’t get a drink. Yet…

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