[Grad-postdoc-assn] Fwd: TP Msg. #1190 Conferences: Do Not Hide Under a Bushel

[Vanessa Schweizer]

Dear all,

If you haven't been to many conferences yet, there is some good advice in
this post. The closing piece of advice is valuable too: Know when to
refrain from going to conferences.

Vanessa

--
Vanessa Schweizer
ASP Postdoctoral Fellow
Climate and Global Dynamics (CGD) Division &
Integrated Science Program (ISP)
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
P.O. Box 3000 | Boulder, CO 80307 | USA

Phone: +1 (303) 497-1713
Fax: +1 (303) 497-1314


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rick Reis <reis at stanford.edu>
Date: Thu, Jun 28, 2012 at 8:56 AM
Subject: TP Msg. #1190 Conferences: Do Not Hide Under a Bushel
To: tomorrows-professor <tomorrows-professor at lists.stanford.edu>


*NOTE: The TP eNewsletter will now take its annual July/August Northern
Hemisphere summer break to stock up on future postings. The next posting,
 #1191 will appear on Monday, September 3, 2012.  *

*Regards,

Rick Reis*
----------------

There are several reasons for attending a conference. This is an
opportunity for the world to see the face behind the name–you! This is why
giving good talks is important. Most talks last 12 minutes, yes, 12 minutes
with about 3 minutes for questions. Therefore, claim your fame during your
talk!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Folks:

The posting below looks at important things students should do at
conferences to maximize their time and beneifit. It is from Chapter 8,
Communicating, in the book, Navigating Graduate School and Beyond: A Career
Guide for Graduate Students and a Must Read for Every Advisor, by Sundar A.
Christopher. Published under the aegis of the AGU Books Board.[
http://www.agu.org/] © Copyright 2011 by the American Geophysical Union,
2000 Florida Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20009. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis
reis at stanford.edu
UP NEXT: TBD


Tomorrow's Research

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Conferences: Do Not Hide Under a Bushel

Ah! The word conference conjures up images of traveling to Hawaii and
listening to talks in the morning and snorkeling in the evening after the
conference. Well, let me be the first to burst that bubble. Conferences are
not all that glamorous, and they usually require a lot of work and
preparation. They can be downright draining.

In most disciplines, there are the revered and the most anticipated annual
or biannual meetings. They give you an opportunity to get out of town,
travel by plane (usually), stay in a hotel, eat in strange restaurants,
meet your colleagues, make new friends, network, listen to interesting
talks (and some boring ones), eat dinner while talking science, and lay
awake in bed in a strange hotel in spite of the 17 pillows they have to fit
your neck curvature just to get up exhausted. And you do this for 3 to 5
days! Cynicism aside, conferences can be good or bad. Some conferences last
for 5 days, and there are at least 50 sessions throughout the week. Even
your electronic organizer cannot keep up with the scheduling of the talks.
Needless to say, it is a nightmare! Other conferences are smaller and are
much more focused, so you usually stay in one or two conference rooms the
entire time. I tend to like this because I can learn more from these
focused meetings.

Here is how the path to a conference works. Conferences are announced
months or even a year in advance. The topical areas are listed on the
website, and you are asked to submit an abstract (less than a page) and
indicate whether you would like to present it orally or in the form of a
poster. While most folks like to “talk” since it is considered prestigious,
I believe that a poster can be equally important. So I suggest that for
every conference that you go to (if permitted by the organizers), ask for
one poster and for one paper presentation. It is a tremendous experience to
interact both ways. There is no guarantee that even if you asked for an
oral presentation that you may be given one. You may end up with two
posters. It’s not that the organizers do not like you; they are simply
juggling several things to accommodate posters and presentations alike.
Since hundreds of scientists write such abstracts, the organizers have to
group them. Depending upon priority, they allocate some for talks and a
vast majority for posters. Some conferences only require you to write a one
page abstract. Others either require you to write an extended abstract,
usually three to four pages, or leave it up to you to write one or not.

A conference abstract is usually written months before you even attend and
present at the conference. Therefore, you are doing some work between the
time of abstract submission deadline and the actual conference itself.
Apart from the obvious–title, author list, and affiliations–remember to
specify the session you are interested in and whether or not you are
planning an oral or poster presentation. The abstract should highlight why
this work is important, what some of the data sets and methods are, some
results that you already have, and what you are working on. After you
submit your abstract, make sure that when you travel to the conference, you
have the same title. Switching titles and focus of the paper is unfair to
the audience because in a big conference they have juggled schedules to get
to your talk. You need to make sure that you are presenting something true
to your abstract.

Imagine this: You are at a large annual conference in California just
before Christmas, and there are multiple parallel sessions. All you have is
a conference proceedings book that you were given when you registered. You
look through the abstracts, and you are excited because someone is going to
talk about the effect of agriculture on air quality at 11:30 A.M. in a
certain room. You have another talk that you would also like to attend, but
you make sure that you are there at 11:30 to hear about air pollution. The
abstract had looked rather interesting since that is your area of research.
At 11:30, if the speaker stands up and starts talking about some field
experiment results related to water vapor, this can be hugely disappointing
to you. Therefore, when you write your abstract, make sure that you will
talk about things that you say you will when you wrote the abstract.

I was once asked to come up with five things a student should do at a
conference to organize their time. Remember that there are a lot of things
going on with talks happening in several rooms all at the same time. How
does one formulate a plan? I suggest dividing your time between these five
parts. Obviously, the percentage of time in each of these sections will
vary depending upon where you are in graduate school. Here are some
guidelines:

• Attend talks that will strengthen your specific research topics.
• Attend talks that will broaden and enhance your research.
• Learn how to have fun at the conference venue.
• Interact with peers from other universities and organizations. Networking
with your peers pays huge dividends. Peers today,
  leaders tomorrow!
• Finally, set aside some time to talk to potential mentors and some of the
icons of the field. Most senior researchers enjoy
  interacting with graduate students.

There are several reasons for attending a conference. This is an
opportunity for the world to see the face behind the name–you! This is why
giving good talks is important. Most talks last 12 minutes, yes, 12 minutes
with about 3 minutes for questions. Therefore, claim your fame during your
talk!

Conferences are also for networking. Networking simply means that you meet
people of similar research interests so that you can collaborate with them
to further your research and, get this, theirs! Conferences are also great
places to meet potential mentors and to gain ideas for deepening or
diversifying research.

Here’s something you won’t hear in any book (except this one!). If you do
not plan on interacting at a conference, don’t even go. If all you will do
is interact with your office mates or your friends from your workplace, you
might as well do that over a cup of hot chocolate at a coffee shop in your
neighborhood rather than travel all the way to a conference. It’s a waste
of time and money. At the end of each conference, you should be able to sit
down and list specifically the people with whom you interacted and the
follow-on action items as a result of those interactions.

This is also a great opportunity to seek out those in the field who have
written papers and conducted field experiments. So muster up courage and
introduce yourself. Most senior scientists welcome the young researcher in
the field and are eager to provide great advice. Early in my career, at an
annual conference, I got up to give my talk and saw one of the leading
researchers in the field in the audience. He asked a difficult question,
and I thought I answered it reasonably well although I wasn’t sure. During
the break, I approached him and introduced myself. He spoke with me for a
while, encouraged me, and provided some valuable advice on how to move my
research forward. As a parting thought, he said that he welcomed my
collaboration and indicated that there was lots of room in that field. It
left a lasting impression that I carry with me today. Even though he passed
away prematurely in an accident recently, we wrote several papers together,
and I learned from him every single time! Remember that there is a lot of
room for people to grow together in your field of interest. Do not slam the
door shut on people. They are not competitors but collaborators!

A note about answering questions: Have you ever been at a conference and at
the end of a talk, a hand goes up on one side of the room? A question is
raised that you can hardly hear, yet the speaker starts answering the
question. None except the few people around the person who asked the
question have heard this question. Another annoying aspect is when the
speaker does not wait for the question to be finished but starts answering
in the middle of the question. Rude, wouldn’t you say? Or, my favorite, the
rambling question that takes up almost a minute or the rambling answer that
is not even close to the question that was raised. The list of negatives
could be endless.

With that in mind, here are some thoughts. Wait until the question has been
completed. Repeat the question if the audience did not get an opportunity
to hear it. Answer the question concisely and clearly without being
condescending.

If you are attending a conference, then you should present a paper or two.
Let me say this upfront even though I will get into trouble for this.
Conference papers that appear in proceedings usually count for nothing on
your resume as far as demonstrating your productivity simply because they
are not peer reviewed. So do not waste your time on writing conference
papers unless it is for practice!

Do not waste your time at conferences by endlessly wandering the corridors.
It is like a theme park. I didn’t say a zoo, but a theme park! You have a
short period of time, and if you want to see all the attractions, you had
better do some preparation before you land at the conference. Check out the
conference proceedings online before you go. Mark all the talks that
interest you. Jot down all the folks you would like to meet and interact
with and follow a game plan. While you are at it make sure that you have
fun after the conference ends or in the evenings, getting to know people
beyond only the scientific realm. Lasting relationships are formed during
these conferences.

I still remember going to South America during the first year of my life as
an assistant professor for a conference. I met a young and energetic
graduate student at that time. Little did I know that he would run major
field campaigns and become a major force in the field! We ate a lot of
meals together and talked about the good and bad of science. We are now
good friends both on and off the scientific field. You never know what
might happen to the person with whom you interact today.

One last piece of advice! Don’t travel too much to attend conferences and
only present papers. While it may be good for a while, it does take
valuable time away from doing research and that bottom line: Writing those
papers! Be sensible about allocating time for conferences and making the
best use of your time.

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