Boards are the very essence of an Expos. Although the rules technically state that an Expos does not require visual/audio aids, you will rarely see one without presentation boards. Visual aids (VAs) are almost mandatory if you want to even be competitive in Expos; having no boards would be like walking into an OI round in your pajamas without a memorized piece. A guide to making your Expos boards would be:
The standard in Expos used to be that everyone would use foam (or even illustration) boards, that were about 1/4" thick. These were sturdy boards that could handle intricate interactions with your boards. However, due to limited space on easels, this would limit the number of boards to about 7.
Recently (as of 2016), however, there seems to have been a shift in status quo: more and more people are using paper-thin poster boards. Competitors seem to have traded the sturdiness of foam boards for the extra space provided by using poster boards. Although this may seem like a minor change, it actually has a large impact on what kind of Expos is competitive now.
Before, boards would normally stay for about a minute or two on the easel, with complex flaps and pull-outs to further the speech. But now, boards are only present for 45 seconds, before the speaker pulls out a new board to engage the audience. There are only 3-4 interactions per board, as compared to the previous 8+, but this is offset by the number of boards present. Furthermore, interaction with boards is more common; speakers will move, pull, or turn something on about every 5-10 seconds. The audience is constantly stimulated with a steady stream of minor, simple interactions and movements.
Because of how thin poster boards are, competitors can now fit at least 20 boards on one easel. This links back to "Quantity over quality over quantity." The best Expos speeches have a lot of boards, as seen at Stanford and Berkeley tournaments (and even in TCFL). Although you can have complex pop-ups, huge fold-outs, and beautifully designed foam boards, you may not fare as well as someone who has 25 simple-interaction boards. This is where quantity beats quality.
However, this is not to say that 10 shoddy poster boards made the night before (please don't ever make your boards the night before; we'll get to that later) will beat an artisan foam board. These poster boards are, of course, well thought out and still look professionally made. This is not a school art project where you can draw all over your poster boards in crayon, slap on some glitter glue, and get an A. These boards have full board-sized high resolution images, motorized moving parts, as well as flashing lights. Poster boards, however, will have to sacrifice some features due to its flimsiness. Therefore, there are usually only 3-4 interactions per board, with these interactions being very simple. Typical interactions would be attaching a new image, pop-ups,This is where quality beats quantity.
In short, the best Expos speeches these days have a ton of boards by using thin, poster boards. Because of the sheer multitude of boards and the simple interactions on each of them, they seem to be more successful than past elaborate foam boards.
