"The self-made inferno of the academic junk bond era is the conferences, where the din of ambition is as deafening as on the floor of the stock exchange. The huge, post-1960s’ proliferation of conferences . . . produced a diversion of professional energy away from study and toward performance, networking, advertisement, cruising, hustling, glad-handing, back- scratching, chitchat, groupthink." Camille Paglia, 1992 (I came across this quote recently and had to add it to this blog post).
You can only attend your first conference once, and I just did. So here are my thoughts and advice as a grad student who just attended her first conference.
As I head home on the train from my first ever conference, I am still overwhelmed with feelings (mostly positive!) and ideas are still bouncing frantically around my head. I have another 15 hours of travel ahead so I thought I would take this opportunity to share with you my thoughts and suggestions on attending a conference. But to start, here’s what I didn’t expect…
It’s stressful. I had no idea I would feel endlessly tired and no amount of coffee would cure that. My talk was scheduled for the last hour of the last day of the conference, and the stress of my time behind the podium was constantly looming over my head.
It’s exhausting to be always introducing myself, trying to sound smart and interesting, putting myself out there and making a good impression.
My head was crammed full of information and exciting ideas. It’s really exciting and overwhelming at the same time.
I didn't get to meet everyone I wanted to, but I certainly met some great people and made some new friends. Same goes for some talks that I wanted to attend but there were conflicts.
Learning about all the exciting research made me want to do more research. It's seriously addicting. Especially when someone says, "And no one really knows why this is!"
By the time I left, it felt a bit like I was leaving my new giant group of friends. Even though I only met a small number of people, those whose talks I attended became faces I know and research I'm not familiar with.
My first conference was the 2019 Society for Canadian Ornithologists in Quebec City (Fig. 1). I thought there were going to be more students, but it was largely attended by professionals, government biologists, and professors. This was a relatively small conference with a heavy Canadian bird focus from coast to coast to coast. I gave a 15-minute talk (Fig. 2) that was a general overview of my thesis with some preliminary results. I attended as many talks as I could and made a point of saying hello to several people I was interested in meeting. My biggest regrets were that I didn’t refresh my French before arriving in Quebec City and that I compared myself and my research to others so much that by the time I gave my talk I had convinced myself that I wasn’t good enough and felt really uncomfortable up behind the podium.
So given all that, here’s my advice to grad students attending their first conference:
Look at the program before the conference begins and make a list of all the talks you want to go to.
Take notes during talks (or after) of things you might want to remember later. Especially important: write down the names of people and their affiliation. You can make notes into your program, a notebook, or on your phone. I saw several people taking photos of slides with figures, website links, or other interesting info they wanted to have access to later.
Make a mental or physical note of people you want to meet while you’re there (and then keep track of who you end up meeting). Attend their talk then find time to go up to them after to ask a question or compliment them on their talk. If they’re not presenting, find the courage to go introduce yourself or enlist a mutual acquaintance to introduce you to said person.
Take advantage of the social events, free food, workshops, and whatever else is being offered (Fig. 3), but don’t feel bad if you need to take a breather (or a nap!) at any point during the conference.
Tweet during the conference with the associated hashtag. It will help people recognize you, bring more attention to the conference, and highlight some of the interesting talks you attended.
Related to the last one: put your Twitter handle on your first or last slide or on your poster.
If you’re preparing a talk or poster: remember to be inclusive as much as you can – use large fonts, avoid heavy jargon or acronyms, avoid colours that will be difficult for those with colour-blindness to interpret, find out what the language policy is for you conference and adhere to it (I didn’t and I regret that).
If you’re preparing a talk, test it out in the room and on the computer that you will present on/in well before your talk. Give yourself time to make edits if something doesn’t look quite right. It will help you feel better prepared when you get up there.
If possible and if the conference is somewhere you want to explore, try to arrive a day or two early to allow time to go out and explore the area (Fig. 5 & 6). I stayed an extra day after but was so exhausted that I didn’t have much energy left to walk around or travel.
Have fun! This is a great time to network and learn a lot, but it’s also time to get to know other scientists and enjoy spending time with like-minded people.
My graduate supervisor has a similar list of advice that he sends to his grad students before their first conference. I’ve chosen the ones that I felt were most important and added my own thoughts to them.
What would I do differently and what do I plan to do differently next time?
I would have practiced my French a bit more before showing up in a Francophone city to a bilingual conference. I would have made a point of translating some of my text into French. Many people didn’t, so I wasn’t alone, but that’s absolutely not a good excuse.
I would bring business cards with me that have my name, affiliation, and contact info (including my Twitter handle). Maybe this is less important for a Master’s student, but if I was going as a PhD student or professional biologist, I would definitely consider getting cards made up. This makes it easiest when you meet people and they ask for your contact info.
I would take more photos and tweet more. It was very busy, but it’s really valuable to show the rest of the Twitter world about important research happening in our field, and especially for those who can’t be there for many reasons (financial, timing, distance, etc.).
I would wear more bird clothes. I got lots of compliments on my bird shirts (Fig. 4), dress, and tattoos. It makes for a good conversation starter and it’s actually how I ended up meeting a number of people at this conference. Watch for me at Value Village in the coming months frantically searching the racks for more bird shirts!
Again, there are just the thoughts of one grad student (me) from one conference (SCO-SOC 2019) focused on one field (ornithology). Others will very likely have different experiences and thoughts on conferences. I’m VERY curious in what others would add to these lists in terms of things that surprised them about conferences, what they would recommend to others, and what they wish they had done differently. Please add your comments below.
I would also like to give a shout-out to the organizers of this conference. I can't compare to other conferences but I can say that I'm very excited for future SCO-SOC stand-alone meetings!
My next conference is the joint AFO-WOS meeting in Cape May, NJ at the end of October! I will be using this first experience to help me prepare. Stay tuned for my next blog post, “Advice to grad students from a grad student: second conference” (jokes).
