More power! The poster with a plug

One of the most unusual posters I saw at the International Congress of Neuroethology meeting in August was this one, being presented by Yossi Yovel:

You might not immediately recognize what’s different about this poster. Title, data, and boxes, the omnipresent boxes... It is mounted a little low. And some might recognized that the story has already been published, which is slightly unusual for a conference poster.

Allow me to point out...

The video screen.

That’s right, they were showing video of their bats behaving on their poster. This took some work. They found a cheap, small portable television, and they had to make a fairly complex set of adjustable metal braces, to allow for the fact that they didn’t know the size of the poster board. You need to be close to a power outlet, as you can see in this “behind the curtain” shot:

It seems a much more elegant solution than trying to find some space to hold up a laptop screen to someone. I got wondering if there was a simpler way to do this, and I thought of this.

1. Go online and buy some cheap second hand portable media player. There are lots that play video. An iPod nano, a Sansa, iRiver...
2. Transfer the videos over.
3. Add simple directions to the poster to the poster for how to see the video.
4. Attach the player to your poster with some double sided mounting tape or something similar.

Reference

Yovel Y, Falk B, Moss CF, Ulanovsky N. 2010. Optimal Localization by Pointing Off Axis. Science 327(5966): 701-704. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1183310