Posters are social objects

Posters are one of the primary social objects of science.

It is easy to start people talking with posters. Posters are both the pretext and context for a conversation. They are a conversation script with their predefined beginning, middle, and end. The poster medium is inherently one-on-one or small group. People are comfortable communicating in that context, in contrast to the contrivance of "giving a speech."