Virtual Poster Expo Instructions

Virtual poster set-up and participation

We are excited to be hosting the CURF Spring Research Poster Expo as a virtual poster session! You can participate in this event in various ways. You can simply submit a poster, you can enhance the experience by including a short video discussing the highlights of your work, or you can host a live video chat during the poster session.  Here are instructions for preparing  your virtual poster session materials:

  • Poster. Your poster may be either portrait or landscape orientation. Please try to stick to the original physical dimensions for posters in setting up your PDF document: 24 inches high x 36 inches wide (or 36 inches high and 24 inches wide). Your poster must be submitted as a pdf. You probably have already done this. If you haven't, please visit the submission form.
  • Video: To include an optional video discussion of your poster, create a short (no more than 5 minutes) video and host it as a private video on YouTube or Vimeo. Think of this as your poster spiel that you’d give to a passerby who asked ‘what’s the poster all about?’ They can be as short as you’d like (the 30 second drive-by version!) or up to five minutes if you’d like to give a more detailed presentation. We will leave the details of how the video looks to you, but we give guidance and suggestions for how to produce a poster video below. These videos should be 5 minutes maximum. 
  • If you need any help with your poster or video, please contact Aaron Olson

Please do not feel obligated to make the video component if you are uncomfortable with this option or simply prefer not to for any reason; we suggest this as one way to recapture the face-to-face aspect of the poster session. But minimally uploading the poster PDF counts as ‘having presented the poster.’ 

If your research contains anything under a confidentiality agreement or NDA, please contact Aaron Olson for more instructions.

In addition, please consider creating:

  • A text transcript of your video. To maximize accessibility of your presentation, consider including a text transcript of your video in your hosting solution. While CURF is currently unable to offer automatic transcription services, you may wish to utilize automatic generation of closed captions.
  • Video chat or other media. If you are interested in hosting a live video chat during your poster session (e.g. over Zoom, Skype, YouTube streaming, or Google Hangouts), or have other types of media you would like to share with poster visitors during the poster session, please send those details to Aaron Olson.
    .

Make your video!

Please consider creating a short video to accompany your poster. Treat this as if a conference attendee approaches your poster and asks you what your poster is all about. You may do this any way you would like: show your face, don’t show your face, show a nice background, have a view of your poster, give slides, or any combination of these! We anticipate our attendees have lots of different ways of making videos. We are happy for you all to get creative and have fun with this, and use whatever software you like.

Videos in Quicktime/iMovie

Mac users can make movies using Movie, QuickTime Player, and even just the camera functionality on your phone. Here’s how to use Quicktime to make a video of screen + webcam:

  • Open Quicktime.
  • Go to file > new movie recording. Go to view > float on top.  Position the image where you want it on the screen.
  • Go to file > new screen recording. Click the down arrow next to the record button.  Select internal microphone as sound source. Press the record button.
  • Make your slide(s) full screen. Now give your talk.
  • When you’re done, minimize your slides. You’ll see a little record button on the upper right app bar; click it.  This will stop the recording.
  • Save the file somewhere.

Here’s how you can convert the Quicktime movie to an .mp4:

  • Open iMovie.
  • Go to Projects, then Create New, then Import Media.
  • Import the file you just made.
  • Go to file > share > file
  • Select Quality:High and Compress:Faster.
  • Save it. It will now save as an mp4

Hosting your Video:

We cannot provide hosting on our site right now, but you can create a private video on youtube and send Aaron the link, and it will be able to be embedded on your poster's page. Vimeo is also acceptable as a hosting solution, as long as it's not password-protected.

If you need any help, please contact Aaron Olson