Conference/workshop does not provide for 'poster logistics' - is that normal?

Question

I'm supposed to present a poster in an well-rated Computer Science conference, or rather in a workshop within that conference. This is the first time this workshop will have posters (the larger conference has had them for a while). However, I've not received any information about the logistics of getting the poster printed and delivered - just a general note, after my inquiring about it, saying that I'm at liberty to design it any way I like and in any dimensions I like. In a previous conference at which I presented a poster we were told to submit a PDF of dimensions X x Y by a certain time, and that was that - the poster was printed and set up someplace. The opposite case seems strage, ridiculous even: For 10 or 20 (or 100) people, coming in from different countries, to each have to arrange for the printing of a poster and either bring it from overseas in a special container or to have to coordinate with print shops in a city they don't know.

The conference is held in a couple of weeks and I'm getting worried... of course I've contacted the workshop organizers about this, but - was I wrong to expect this to be taken care of? Is there some kind of other option of arranging this which I'm missing?

Answer 1

I'm answering from an HCI-related subfield of CS:

What you describe - attendees print and bring their posters themselves - is completely normal.

While I do not rule out it exists even in my specific field, I have never encountered a conference that would print posters for you. Any time I have participated in, or just looked at the CfP for a poster session, attendees were merely told the available board size (and thus, the maximum allowable size for the poster) and asked to prepare their poster in time for the poster session.

Typically, attendees then have the poster printed at their home institution (and get compensated by the institution as a part of the conference attendance cost). This has the nice side-effect that, at least in smaller places, you might already get in touch with a few conference attendees at the airport, because you notice the people walking around with poster tubes. At some point before the poster session (depending on the conference, already at the beginning of the conference), attendees will take a few minutes to affix their posters at the boards they have been assigned (or just at any boards, if the poster space works in a first-come first-serve manner).

The poster belongs to the attendee/their employer and they are free to do with it after the poster session what they like. A possible procedure that has been followed by many people I have been in touch with is to take the poster back to one's home institution and place it on some wall in or near one's office.

A word on your impression:

The opposite case seems strage, ridiculous even: For 10 or 20 people, coming in from different countries, to each have to arrange for the printing of a poster and either bring it from overseas in a special container or to have to coordinate with print shops in a city they don't know.

In a way, that's true. But then, note that poster printing (well, any graphics printing) comes with a certain deal of variety and "risks". Colours might be messed up, the size/margins might be unfitting ... add to that that different regions of the world are used to (and thus base their poster templates on) different paper formats. Thus, it is desirable to see the poster when there is still some time to make some corrections.

As for the special container - any university institute I have encountered owns several of these, for exactly this purpose. Note that if you want to bring back the poster (as described in my text above), you need such a container anyway for the way back, so there would be no point in carrying the container there without anything in it.

Answer 2

A conference, or workshop where the posters are printed for you is very exceptional. It sounds reasonable to print all posters for the presenters locally but

• you can print posters much cheaper at university than in any copy shop, because its subsidized
• some prefer a cheap preprint, others are willing to pay for the nice glossy high quality print.
• the posters are often created with very different software such as LaTeX, Inkscape, Corel Draw or even Powerpoint... Even if one requests an PDF version xy file: They all interpret the PDF standard differently. PDF/a tries to solve this and PDF/a verification tools exist, but hardly any program (and user) knows about it. NB: A higher version number in PDF represents more complexity (Javascript and the like) but not better compatibility.
• some guests will try to send a 1 GB file, because they use a fancy bitmap background picture, others do not want to hand out the digital files.
• most people prefer to have a final review on the printed poster and have a final chance to improve colours. Especially Windows users in our institute have often broken symbols in diagrams (black box ■ instead of µ).
• additional staff (expensive) is required to print, to discuss with attendees about file standards, and to hang up the posters.
• people often meet and discuss already when hanging up the posters (this is an additional poster session for free ;-) (thanks to O. R. Mapper for the comment. I share his experience.)

This is why posters are usually printed individually, if it is not a in-house workshop. However there are conferences with presentations on large screens instead of paper poster too.

Travelling with a poster is sometimes difficult and I have seen fabric printed posters very often, but also patchworks of many DIN A4 sheets to get one A0 poster.

Image source: http://depts.washington.edu/uwposter/product/travel-fabric-poster/

Answer 3

Hello from the biology field! It's very common for us to print our own posters (I've actually never seen a conference where they do that for you, although I'm sure they do exist somewhere).

I wanted to add a small point to the other detailed answers: if the posters are printed in the attendee's institution, they then belong to said institution, and can be re-used at other conferences (which definitely lowers the cost and environmental impact!) and/or displayed in the corridors and other "social" places - in each lab I've worked in, we had walls covered in collections of previous posters, reminding people of past work, past colleagues, and helping explanations to visitors.

Answer 4

Speaking from the Applied Mathematics/Earth Science divide, the closest I've seen to the model that the question implies is where a conference will advertise a partner commercial poster printing firm, which will then have a physical presence at the conference, from which your poster can be collected. Actually placing the poster in the correct location remains the duty of the presenter however, and prices don't really seem all that competitive.

This tends to be linked to very large conferences, with multiple poster sessions per day, and to conferences which repeatedly use the same facilities year after year, and thus have built up enough repeat custom for both sides to keep up the relationship. When conferences are smaller, or cycle between multiple venues without revisiting, then it's possible a local member of the organising committee might have a recommendation of a local firm, but often, particularly if it's being held on a campus site, it's just left up to the individual presenters.

Having said all that, in the modern age it's fairly trivial to find a firm which will print and deliver a poster via snail mail. If you can arrange to get it sent to your hotel (for a large conference) or a friendly member of the organising committee (for a smaller one) then the same effect can be produced.

Answer 5

I'm adding an answer of my own based on the reply I got from the workshop chairs and information I gathered from other sources.

First - as others suggest, it is indeed at least very common for conferences not to print posters themselves. It's apparently just as common for there to be absolutely no support from the organizers for poster printing.

But what was just as interesting was the following:

Up until not so many years ago, there were no/very few posters in the conference + workshops overall. More and more tracks and workshops of the conference started "amassing" poster sessions - but apparently it has not dawned on many people that this is now a "many posters conference" (I estimate over 100). In fact, the reply to my question about the possibility of the conference doing the printing was, that there are no resources allocated for it, but that it "would be a great because XYZ". So, apparently nobody has brought up the possibility of the conference organization including the centralized printing of posters.

So my bottom line is:

Sometimes, the option of "conference prints" has simply not been considered; and thus is the default rather than the norm. We can make a convincing case in its favor - especially in large conferences - and make it more common as well.