PhD Wednesday: Preparing for a Scientific Conference Part 2

Welcome to the second installment of PhD Wednesdays! Part 2 of "How to Prepare for a Scientific Meeting." Check out my previous post for more tips on preparing for scientific meetings, especially small specialty meetings.

  

Can I just say again how awesome Scientific Meetings are for summer travel? Living on a grad student budget, with the ever present feeling that you should be writing, reading, doing experiments, or otherwise advancing toward your PhD, taking extended time off can feel all but impossible. Conferences let you take time off and check out a new city, at the same time "getting work done", for FREE! I just realized that I didn't talk about this at all in the last post, but its the best part! So here is a bonus tip to get this post started: 

PhD Wednesday: Preparing for a Scientific Conference

Welcome to PhD Wednesdays! These posts will be dedicated to all things science and PhD life. If you're thinking about joining (or are already in) the world of science, I hope you will find these posts interesting and helpful! 

Scientific meetings are a BIG part of graduate school and a career in research. Conferences are an opportunity to share your work and learn about cutting edge projects in your field. They are also great opportunities for networking. If you are looking to find a post-doctoral fellowship, faculty position, or to start a new collaboration you can meet potential mentors and collaborators who are usually excited to work with you.  Preparing in an advance helps you take advantage of all the opportunities your meeting has to offer!

Scientific meetings come in three main flavors, the small specialty conference, the large general interest conference, and the gigantic general science conference. I have had the opportunity to attend and present at several different types of conferences but I am by no means an expert. This post outlines some of the things I've found helpful in preparing for the "small specialty conference". In Part 2, I'll share my tips for the "large general interest conference".

The small specialty conference will usually cover a relatively narrow area of science such as retroviruses, host-DNA damage responses, stem cell biology, etc. I say 'relatively' because narrow can be very relative especially to us scientists. In general, the subject matter is focused enough that you will likely recognize several of the labs presenting at the conference if you have been working in your area for a while.  The size of these meetings can be in the truly small range, about 300-500 people, all the way to up 3,000 people. These conferences have a lot of advantages due to their small size and will provide the most opportunities for genuine networking and collaborations.  I hope these tips will help you maximize your small conference experience!