Tips on attending scientific and professional meetings

Attending meetings is a key element of career development. Here are just a few reasons to get you out the door and on a plane:

1. Learn about the latest research or clinical approaches in your area of study
2. Promote and receive feedback on your work
3. Meet prospective mentors, colleagues, and students
4. Have fun

This is harder than it seems. You will have limited time and money to spend on conferences. You will want to select those meetings that match your developing career interests. Ideally, you will find a particular conference that becomes your essential meeting that you attend every year. By adopting a particular conference and becoming a regular, you can become well known to your chosen circle of academic colleagues and over the years develop in leadership roles within that conference and community. Plus, you'll know where all the good bars are if the meeting is held at a consistent location.

Give some thought as well to the size of the conferences that you decide to attend. A good balance is to regularly attend a smaller conference (~1000 attendees) with a focus in your academic area, and a larger conference (like Society for Neuroscience or the American Academy of Neurology meeting) to get a wider view of the field. While there are smaller, very specialized meetings that are very rewarding to attend, these do not serve the purpose of helping you cultivate a larger community of scholars who can evaluate your work and provide you networking opportunities.

In addition to travel and hotel arrangements, you should make some preparations for attending a conference:

• Download the meeting planner app and build your itinerary. Search for keywords related to your interests, as well as for the names of investigators whose work you follow.
• If there is anyone you would like to meet, contact them a week or two before the conference. Use a short email with an informative subject line:

<WRAP center round box 90%> Subject: Chat about parietal neuron recording at SfN

Prof. Simmons -

I work with Dr. Gold at U Penn studying motion coding in area MT. I've read your recent papers on head-mounted recording systems and I would really appreciate the opportunity to chat with you about the approach. I'll be attending the upcoming SfN meeting in DC in November. If you are attending the meeting, would you be able to meet with me for a few minutes?

Many thanks,

Student </WRAP>

• It may seem completely anachronistic, but business cards are still useful and are still exchanged. Handing over a simple card with your name, institution, and email address avoids the awkward fumbling of phones and trying to spell out email addresses. Get a few printed up, especially if you are in a job search.
• Practice your elevator pitch to describe yourself and your research / clinical focus.

Most conferences have a mix of platform presentations (talks) and posters. Conference organizers usually attempt to place the most exciting work in the platform sessions, although different meetings follow different styles.

If there are talks in parallel sessions that you want to attend, it is perfectly acceptable to get up and leave a session. Ideally, you would do so quietly, between sessions.

Most platform sessions feature a brief question-and-answer session following each talk. You should feel empowered to ask questions regardless of your level of training. Here are some tips:

• If you know in advance that you are likely to ask a question in a particular talk session, grab a seat close to the microphone. As the speaker finishes and the applause begins, move to stand in front of the microphone. Otherwise, a line may form and you will not have the chance to ask your question.
• Mentally compose your question during the talk, prior to approaching the microphone.
• Introduce yourself briefly: “Hi. Geoff Aguirre, UPenn”.
• Ask a single question with a brief preamble. If you intend to offer a comment, and not a question, announce this fact: “I have a brief comment…”
• If the speaker is at your level of training or earlier, and the sentiment is sincere, you may begin your question by indicating that you very much enjoyed the talk or a particular result. This is most appropriate when you know the speaker well enough to use their first name: “Laura, what a great set of experiments. I wanted to ask you about the second result…”
• Step slightly to the side of the microphone while the speaker responds. This allows the next questioner to get in position, but keeps you close by to engage with the speaker if needed.
• If the speaker does not grasp your question, or you disagree with the answer, you can give it one more shot. If there is still confusion or disagreement, offer to chat with them after the session.

While platform presentations are the glamour events of conferences, it is in the trenches of the poster sessions where the real work gets done: scientific differences are debated, projects are planned, and job offers are made. It is also an environment where trainees often feel overwhelmed or snubbed in the melee around a poster. Here are some tips that might help:

• A poster will typically be presented by a trainee, with a senior author lurking in the background. The trainee will have a practiced spiel. As groups form, he will begin at the start of the poster, walking people from the introduction to conclusion.
• If you arrive at a crowded poster, make your way towards the introduction side of the poster. Be willing to wait for a couple of minutes for the presenter to finish with the current group and turn back to the start.
• If possible, introduce yourself to the presenter. Be brief: “Hi, I'm Geoff Aguirre from UPenn. I study cortical vision.”
• At a lightly attended poster, the trainee sometimes needs a nudge to start the presentation: “Would you tell me about your work?”
• Trainees often give overly long poster presentations. If the poster is lightly attended, it is OK to gently suggest skipping ahead: “If I may interrupt you for a second. I understand the background and everything up through experiment 1. Could you explain how experiment 2 is designed?”
• The smooth rhythm of a poster presentation can be interrupted by the arrival of a Big Wig (BW). The senior investigator, lurking in the background, will typically chat with the BW and then introduce them to the trainee at the start of the next presentation cycle. Sometimes, however, the trainee may stop mid-sentence in talking with you and turn to start presenting the poster to the newly arrived BW. This is a snub, but a forgivable one. The trainee has spent months (years?) working on this topic, and hours standing in front of a poster, hoping for this one brief moment when they can present their work to a senior person whose opinion they value.
• If you find yourself in this situation, try to remain part of the conversation. As you will have introduced yourself to the poster presenter, they may in turn introduce you to the BW. There is also much to learn from listening to these conversations.
• Taking photos: At most meetings, you are prohibited from taking photos of posters and the slide presentations. This rule allows presenters to reveal their scientific work in progress with less fear that their work will be “scooped” or that they will be held to account for a preliminary interpretation of results. If you think photography is allowed at a meeting, you should ask the presenter before taking a photo of their poster.

• Coffee or beer is cheap and hard to refuse. Be generous in your offers to buy someone a drink if you'd like to talk to them for a few minutes. When people do agree to meet with you, be sure to thank them for their time.
• Twitter is an increasingly valuable tool for finding out about gatherings and important events during a conference. Find out the hashtag that is being used for the meeting.
• If you are spending all your time hanging out with people from your home institution, you are doing it wrong.
• A fantastic way to get to know someone at a meeting is to accompany them visiting posters. This is particularly appropriate if you are considering fellowship training or a collaboration with them. You will get a chance to see how they think about new results or clinical issues, how they interact with other scholars, and will be introduced to people they know. This is a request that usually should be made in advance of the poster session: “Dr. X, are you going to the poster session tomorrow afternoon? Perhaps we could visit a few posters together. I'm curious what you think of the new work in stroke management.”
• Trainees often assume that the primary goal of networking at meetings is to get to know senior faculty. This is not the case. You are unlikely to have much of a chance to chat with a senior person if you do not arrange to do so in advance. The real networking you should focus upon is your peer group. Over the course of a career, these are the people who will evaluate your grants, invite you to give lectures, read your papers, and hire your students. The good news is that networking with this group doesn't look like work. Instead, it involves hanging out at the bar or grabbing dinner with a fun crowd.