ful in their careers. As previously mentioned, pilot workshop participants (i.e., those involved in 2019/2020; Schiebel et al. 2021) mentioned an overwhelming interest in training on other types of communication skills beyond the scope of the pilot. Although the pilot workshops were focused on building oral presentation slides, many participants requested more practice with designing a conference poster. The focus of the 2021 workshop was poster design and presentation, which was very well received based on a 30-min informal discussion at the end of the workshop. Early career scientists may be more likely to present posters rather than talks at large conferences, so shifting gears to provide this content has been well received. Moving forward, this same content will be featured in the workshop. The original proposal was for the workshop to be fully in-person, but due to COVID-19 this in-person mode was not possible. While this move to a virtual workshop was not ideal, it was not a major setback. The biggest difficulty was accommodating the verbal sessions as these are intended to be interactive and “on your feet.” Michelle was able to pivot and create sessions that still enabled participants to interact in smaller breakout rooms and then share thoughts in the main room space. There were a few outcomes of the fully virtual space that were beneficial. First, because everyone was able to be online, multiple time zones were reached at one time. It appeared people were more comfortable asking questions using the chat feature on Zoom, presumably because most participants had already had experience with Zoom and the chat feature during the pandemic. Finally, more participants were engaged than in the pilot workshops. In previous years, approximately 40 of 50 slots were filled onsite, vs. 53 participants in the 2021 virtual session. We still feel that an inperson workshop is the best environment for the delivery of this material, but the alternate fully remote option was highly successful. For future workshops we are exploring the option of a twoday workshop with virtual poster creation sessions on the first day a few weeks before the conference, and then a second day focused on inperson poster presentation. This would allow for participants to: (1) not be overwhelmed by receiving all the content in one day, and (2) harness the potential of both virtual and in-person professional development. The workshop team feels strongly that the shift in content from slide to poster design along with the move to a virtual environment in light of COVID-19 created a successful workshop based on survey and informal participant feedback. We have plans to continue with virtual engagement in some form for coming workshops.
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