I don’t attend many science/technology conferences, so the genre of the one-minute poster presentations is brand new to me.  The genre is akin to the haiku or flash fiction — it’s a research paper bared down to the bones.  Flash scholarship?  60-second-scholarship?

About 20 people pre-loaded their slides onto the conference room computer, then lined up in the aisle. Each was given one minute to present their ideas. The host had an ooga-ooga horn that he squeezed when the one minute was up.

It’s painful to watch someone cut off in mid-sentence, but it’s a fascinating genre. Plus, this one-minute pitch is designed to get the conference attendees to stop by the presenter’s table later on.  It’s an efficient way to for conference attendees to sample all the posters, and it’s a good chance for the presenters to encapsulate why their work is worth a closer look.

Okay, now that I’ve processed what I think about the genre, I’m ready to shift my focus to the content of the talks.

Paper 15 and 16, on on improving/expanding browser functionality were the most relevant to my interests so far. Paper 18 explicitly mentions blogs, so naturally I’m interested.  Paper 19 “Social WebEx Usage” is an educational tool that interests me; from the quotes from students it seems to be teaching Java, which is not an application I’d need.

Students whose posters are rated the best will give 10-minute talks tomorrow, and the winners of that will go on to the next phase.