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The Covid-19 pandemic brought us poster sessions on Zoom, which create all sorts of challenges. Mainly, it's really hard to see a traditional poster on a screen. You just can't read them when someone is sharing a screen, which is how things often go. Attention wanes very, very quickly.

We need something different to give the feel of a poster session but recognize the visual limitations of computer - not to mention phone screens. Big pictures and minimal text are more important than ever.

In one of my courses, I hold an electronic poster session, or a virtual open house. It's a hybrid between a poster and a presentation. Each poster team is in a Zoom breakout room that visitors can move among freely. They've 8-12ish slides (sections of a poster) and (preferably less than) 10 minutes to walk through their work, with a strong focus on key findings.

Mike Morrison has come to a similar place with his #TwitterPoster concept (keep scrolling).

Here are two examples from my course.

Frustrated by the walls of text at poster sessions, psychology student (at the time in 2019) Mike Morrison created a different kind of poster.

In his minimalist approach, the main message is writ large with additional information along the edges and a QR code to access further information.

Start at 13:40 on the Gen 1 video and 11:40 on the Gen 2 video to get the quick gist.

His virtual and #TwitterPoster concept (further down) seem very similar to my electronic poster concept, but better.