Information for poster presenters

Poster Board Size

The presentation space is one side of a standalone poster board, 4 feet wide by 4 feet high, that you can tack posters or individual pages onto.

Creating your poster

A poster should be more than just some slides tacked onto a board. You want to call attention to a few key points which you can expand upon in your presentation and which might inspire questions from your viewers. Whether you use graphics, text, or some combination, things should be easily visible from several feet away. For a good sketch of how to construct a poster presentation, refer to this summary.

Printing your poster and getting it to Santa Clara

The main logistical problem with a poster is getting it printed and transported to the show site. Beware that it can be pricey to have a poster printed as a single 4 foot by 4 foot sheet. You have several options:

Printing your poster

The simplest and cheapest option is to print your poster as series of smaller sheets, bring them in your luggage and assemble them on site. This approach can work well, but you need to take care of how the pieces fit together, etc.
You can also have it printed full size or in larger segments by the printer of your choice and bring it along with you - folded or in a mailing tube. Of course airline baggage fees/carry on policies are the issue in this case, please check with your carrier for details.
Unfortunately, onsite printing is not available within a reasonable distance of the Santa Clara Convention Center.

Shipping your poster

If you are shipping your poster you will need to allow as much as a couple of weeks extra time. Your poster MUST arrive no later than March 8th, or it will not make it to the conference. Once you arrive at the conference, you may pick up your poster at the PyCon staff office onsite.

Mail your poster to:


Ewa Jodlowska - PyCon Show Management
c/o TRICORD TRADESHOWS
738 Neeson Road
Marina, CA 93933

Location, schedule and setup

The poster session location within the conference layout will be in the official PyCon program. The room and poster boards will be available for setup from first thing in the morning Sunday, and (if all goes well) Saturday evening. However, the room won't be locked, and there will be no special security if you set up the night before. We'll get the slots marked as soon as we can, but you can refer to the diagram which will be posted here to see where you should place your poster, based on your poster's submission number.

During the poster session

It's expected that presenters will be by or near their posters for the entire poster session, explaining their poster and interacting with interested viewers. (Of course you can grab snacks, etc.) This is your chance to interact with a large segment of the PyCon population, so make the most of it. Want to score extra points with your attendees? Print out smaller, readable versions of your poster to hand out.

We will have photographers taking pictures of you and your poster, which we intend to post on the PyCon website. We may also have some informal roving video efforts as well.

To get an idea of what to expect, check out some of the PyCon US 2012 poster session interviews on pyvideo.org (just look for summary photos that have people standing in front of a poster).

If you need help contact Zac Miller at 678-971-9361 or Chad Cooper.