Online Poster Session Best Practices in SpatialChat

Here are our best practices we learned from our customers running online poster session events

2 years ago   •   3 min read

By Almas Abulkhairov

Poster sessions are the events where people present their work results and discuss them, turn by turn, speaker after speaker.

Usually, there are 30 to 150 poster presenters during typical online poster session events and 100-500 participants.

The goal is to prepare the SpatialChat space for poster presentations in advance with the most enjoyable & comfortable experience. Here are easy steps to make a fantastic poster session event in SpatialChat with minimum design efforts.

Create a reception (in first room)

There's a dedicated person greeting everyone and explaining the SpatialChat concept to people who attend such an event for the first time.

Poster positioning

No matter how many participants will be attending an online poster session - the most important thing is content alignment.

Use room functionality as following:

  • Put four posters per room, separate room space into four quadrants or two halves (example below)
  • In practice, there are also cases of positioning posters into a 3x2 imaginative grid.
  • Create as many rooms as needed. For example, if you have N posters, then you'd need at least N/4 rooms (10 rooms for 40 posters, four posters in each room)
  • use pin image functionality (in admin mode) to pin all content in advance before the event so that when your event starts - everything is prepared, and all content is set and will not disappear
The updated SpatialChat room background gallery for networking event break zones & poster sessions

Add coffee break rooms

Make sure you arrange separate networking rooms as in the example below:

Example of coffee break room in SpatialChat (find this background template in your space room background gallery!)

This way, there will be a dedicated zone for casual conversation, and your attendees will not get lost during the event between all of the rooms.

Use moderation tools while the speaker gives the presentation.

Recommend presenters to use Megaphone functionality - so that everyone hears them inside a room

  • Use these moderation practices - https://help.spatial.chat/hc/en-us/articles/360016572979-Moderating-your-event
  • Arrange a schedule of presenters (who present at which time/turn)
  • Then group around a poster with poster presenter standing in front of their poster and presenting with Megaphone turned ON (don't forget to remind them to turn it off after they completer with presentation and Q/A around a poster)

Good luck with your poster event!

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