The canPOM2021 Poster Fair is a chance for participants to share their latest and greatest scientific results with a wide audience of photonics researchers from across Canada. Poster presenters will be able to highlight their research through a virtual poster presentation during canPOM2021. The poster session will have a dedicated, non-concurrent time slot with incentives to ensure maximum participation from all attendees. Attendees will be able to engage with you virtually via the Gather platform.
There will also be 2 prizes for the best poster presentations, sponsored by Canadian Science Publishing (CSP) of $100 each!
Poster abstracts are due October 8, 2021, and presenters will be notified of abstract acceptance by October 18, 2021. Detailed information on the preparation of the poster will be shared with you upon acceptance of your abstract, including the deadline for poster submission.
Gather Town Virtual Poster Fair
Participants will join us in a 2D world with 8-bit graphics, walking around the conference center by moving their avatar with their keyboard’s arrow keys. The poster session will take place in dedicated rooms, where posters will already be pre-loaded and organized in a grid similar to an in-person conference. To interact with a poster, conference attendees will walk up to the poster and press the “x” key to enter a full-screen viewing. While viewing the poster, they will also be able to interact with the presenter. See the screenshots below of the canPOM 2020 Poster Fair to get a sense of the virtual conference center!
When your avatar is in the private space near a poster, all other conference attendees in that space will be able to see and hear you through your webcam and microphone. You will only be interacting with people in this space, and not the neighbouring spaces. This promotes conversation with the presenter without interrupting conversation going on at other posters.
Poster fair presenters will need to create their poster such that it suits the formatting requirements of GatherTown. Posters will need to be submitted to the organizers before the conference (more details on this process to come!).
In addition to providing organizers with a poster that attendees will view in full-screen mode, presenters must also provide a smaller, “thumbnail” version of their poster that can be quickly viewed at the bottom of the screen as people walk near their poster (see the example poster room above as an example). This is a preview that others can see before they directly engage with presenters.