Going to conferences

I am on my way back from the epic ACNP 2017 meeting and I have spent some time thinking about the meta-aspects of going to scientific conferences, from practical to philosophical. Hopefully you will find my musings helpful!​

Travel Logistics

• Sign up for the reward programs of all major hotel chains. I am finding that there are plenty of advantages beyond collecting points (which never quite seem to add up to anything). However, there are small things that add up in terms of how smooth the trip goes, which makes the extra hassle of signing up worth it (free internet, late checkout etc).
• Collect all your receipts for reimbursement in one place. I use Expensify (I am have no relationship with them except being a customer) to assemble all my receipts and submit an expense report directly from their site. Saves a lot of time.

Conference Logistics

• Make sure you have a plan what you want to do in terms of talks and posters. Going to a meeting without a specific plan will be a great waste of energy and time. No matter how many meetings I have been to, I find that this remains crucial to get the most out of it.
• If you are junior and you do not know people, be bold and introduce yourself. If you are shy, remember that most scientists are introverts. In all my career as scientist, I have been only once rebuffed in an uncomfortable way, so the chance of this happening is really small and even if it happens, it is so worth it in terms of what you gain from all the other successful interactions.
• If you are senior, please do not only spend time with you good old friends but deliberately seek our trainees. Ask them about their science, offer unsolicited career advice, and be encouraging!
• Also prepare a list of people you would like to meet and use it as a guide for how you spend you time at the meeting.
• Get nice business cards and hand them out liberally, does not matter if you are a first time junior conference attendee or the big shark. There is something friendly and exciting about exchanging business cards, I find. Just make sure you do not carry them in your wallet to make sure they do not look like your dog has chewed on them liberally.
• Take detailed notes!
• Organize a lab meeting when you are back to give an update on what you have learned and thought at the conference. This will force you to truly and deeply engage with the material at the meeting and will also greatly leverage the investment of you going to the meeting since the knowledge is further disseminated.
• If you use Twitter, try to provide meaningful content instead of just bragging! If the conference rules allow it, providing info about the discussions, questions asked etc can be really helpful to others who have not had the chance to go to the meeting. Maybe I am just getting old but I am getting tired of all the tweets that pretty much say "look how awesome I am", including the variant "I skipped a day at the meeting and look what amazing trip I undertook."

Personal Advice

• Going to meetings is great fun but it can also be a quite a disruption with negative consequences for your health. Maintain and build your daily routine of taking care of yourself. Take the time to call to say good night to your kids, and do not forget to go to the gym.

Take care,

Flavio