Improving delegate experiences
Conference organisers are always on the lookout for ways to improve the delegate experience in meaningful ways. This can take many forms, and is a balance between producing engaging content, attracting the right delegates and speakers, managing logistics, and bringing it all together at the right price point. More recently, there have been other concerns to manage, such as environmental impacts, travel restrictions, and an increasingly decentralised audience.
A powerful tool to help conference organisers tackle a number of these considerations at once are digital posters. Digital posters have been around for a long time (we launched our first product in 2005!), and historically these have been seen as a digital replacement for the ubiquitous poster boards found at most scientific conferences. But with increasing interconnectedness and vastly improved technology platforms, digital posters are proving to be a simple yet powerful solution across all industries.
But what is a digital poster?
If you haven’t come across them before, you may be surprised that this technology even exists, or that it is already part of a very mature ecosystem. Think of them as a combination of a website, PowerPoint presentation, communication hub, and review page all rolled into one!
From a delegate perspective, Digital Posters are a one stop shop to view and interact with any number of presentations by a variety of speakers. Delegates can choose which presentations to view, and even which aspects of each that they want to engage with. There are options for contacting speakers directly and providing instant feedback. In addition, digital posters have the advantage of being readable on any device, anywhere in the world! This means that a delegate on the ground in Sydney can have the same access to the latest presentations at the same time as a virtual delegate on the other side of the world.
The real magic of digital posters however is what happens from the Speakers perspective. The idea of building and presenting a virtual, distributed, multimedia presentation can seem completely overwhelming! The reality is that Digital Posters are SPEAKER FRIENDLY. Anyone who can create a PowerPoint presentation can just as quickly build a digital poster. In fact, they can even use an existing PowerPoint presentation to create their poster and have the entire process completed in a matter of minutes from the comfort of their own home.
From Physical to Digital
For conferences who make the move from physical to digital posters, there are even more advantages. Traditional physical posters are a centrepiece of many conferences, but they have significant drawbacks when it comes to setting up and disposing of them. Posters take time and materials to build and transport. They need to be protected from damage, wear and loss. At the end of the conference, dozens of bins are often overflowing with discarded presentations which go straight to landfill, while the valuable information they contain is also lost.
Digital posters remove all of these issues. They are easy to create and share. They can be backed up, linked to, archived, and streamed. More importantly, they create zero-waste and don’t need a dedicated hall. Delegates can choose to view them on conveniently located kiosks or on their own devices, while conference organisers can save money on halls that are often located far away from speaker rooms and plenary halls.
Digital posters offer an opportunity to improve the quality and sustainability of conferences, while making it easier and often less expensive to disseminate information. Speakers and delegates can enjoy a more interactive and enjoyable experience, while valuable information can be stored, shared, and reused with the click of a button.
