Stand by your man poster

So here I am in Oakland, presenting my poster (Spectral and Physiological Uniqueness of Lepidium latifolium). And I have to say, being a poster presenter kind of sucks. According to the instructions (yes, there are instructions), "Presenters will need to be by their posters during the evening receptions," which are each 2 hours long. Ugh. It's so dull being chained to my poster (even though it is a very nice one). And no one else seems to be taking the man-your-poster directive all that seriously. But I don't really have anything else to do, I'm not really all that interested in any of the other posters, so I guess I might as well stick by mine. And quite a few people have expressed interest in it and I've had some good discussions about it, so that's awesome. But posters definitely get the shaft compared to talks. Talks are more prestigious than posters, and speakers really only have to be present at the meeting during their talk. At bigger meetings maybe it wouldn't matter so much, but this one is small enough to only have one session going at a time, so you have to sit through all of the talks. You can't pick and choose between several that are going on at the same time. And very few of these talks are at all aligned with my interests... Oh well. I really am proud of my poster. It looks really nice, nicer than the ones around it. (It's all about the semi-gloss paper ;-) ). I had someone take a picture of me with it. (Naturally, I struck a Vanna White pose.) So be on the lookout for that in the next few days.