Readers of the blog and those who’ve seen us at conferences will know that we spend a lot of time in the poster halls at meetings such as AACR, ASCO, ASH, ESMO/ECCO.

Anybody can write about data in a press briefing, or a plenary session, but if you want to have insights into the future, and identify early opportunities, you have to look at posters.

This year at ASCO 2014, others seemed to have the same strategy as the poster halls were frequently overcrowded and for a popular poster it was like a rugby scrum just to reach the poster and scan a QR code.  As for ASCO’s flawed thinking in putting two posters on one board….. the least said about that the better.

What’s interesting in the poster sessions is that there is a wisdom of crowds feel to some of the posters – if there’s a crowd of people, more will gather. It’s like a traffic accident, you can’t possibly read the poster from afar, but it must be important if everyone’s gathered round…

Feels like you're walking to Ohio

Feels like walking to Ohio to reach South 405

Anyone doing the poster circuit at ASCO, puts in the miles between the general sessions on the side of the main exhibit hall, goes over the #BlisterWalk bridge to reach E354b in the East building and then marches up and down the “road to Ohio” to reach South 405 where the Developmental Therapeutics sessions are presented. Rinse and repeat multiple times a day, you’ll soon be scowling at your ‘comfy’ shoes 😉

That said, it was worth the effort and this post offers a personal selection of some of the many posters that caught our attention.

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