Hello!
I participated in my first conference as a doctoral student almost a year ago. Given the travel restrictions imposed by the pandemic, the event took place virtually, enabling a considerable number of attendees and presentations over the three days. Personally, the excitement of entering this realm of science was genuine, and it was a worthwhile experience overall. Still, the eagerness to participate in person only grew higher! Hence, at last, I recently had the chance to participate in my first in-person conference post-pandemic, and it was an entirely new adventure that I would like to share in this post.
2. Exciting scientific discussions
Giving a presentation
First, it struck me to become aware of several technical details that I took for granted when presenting virtually and which were crucial for in-person presentations. For instance, I only saw the room where I was presenting minutes before my talk, giving me a realistic perception of the projection size and where I should stand during the presentation. Furthermore, while I am usually generous with the font size on my slides, I could not have foreseen margin crops in the projection that could affect extended figure panels. Overall, these factors can be hard to predict for every situation but were extremely helpful in calibrating implicit rules on how to prepare in-person presentations, such as: minimising the amount of text in each slide, maximising the font size, and keeping a conservative slide margin such that no relevant content is cropped. Conversely, it is evident that in virtual presentations, sharing the screen gives every attendee a high-resolution full-slide view that is not affected by such factors.
Focusing on the talk itself, this experience also highlighted how important it is to be prepared to deliver the presentation. As I shared in a recent post, I usually draft a presentation script, which I add to the Presenter’s notes and follow during the talk. Nonetheless, the arrangement of the room where I presented did not allow visualising the notes on the monitor, which implied talking by heart. Similarly, in the end, the discussion in real-time leaves no room to check additional notes, reinforcing the need to have a solid background on our work to be comfortable answering the questions.
Exciting scientific discussions
Next, I would like to focus on the interactions arising from the scientific presentations in each session. Although this also happened in the virtual conference (to a smaller extent), it was incredibly motivating and rewarding to attend a talk and have the chance to follow up discussions from the Q&A with the speakers and clarify outstanding topics. As conferences enable researchers to present their most recent results, such discussions provide instant feedback on the work and gather ideas for future tasks. Indeed, attending the talks on related projects can also foster cross-pollination of ideas and inspire possible approaches for our own research.
At the same time, I felt a warm sense of cooperation between colleagues who would be genuinely interested in discussing new ideas, despite working on similar topics.
Fostering networking
Following on the previous topic, in-person conferences promote a level of networking between participants that the virtual option could hardly match. I was amazed at how natural it felt to start new conversations with other presenters during the coffee breaks or even with professors who gave more extended plenary talks and were glad to share their work in more detail.
Indeed, senior doctoral students in our group also shared amusing stories of how they met their “conference buddies”, who they would recurrently see in following conferences, and I look forward to revisiting some of the people I met who are also working in Biomechanics.
Practical logistics
Finally, I would like to share practical details of this experience, which I did not expect to be so influential. First, despite flying the day before the start of the conference, prolonged sitting in the airport and on a plane alongside the typical increased stress levels of travel days led to an uncomfortable state of tiredness. It was also a positive reminder not to leave work at the last minute, as there was little mental space to finish anything.
Next, during the conference itself, it was remarkable how seemingly good nights of sleep were still insufficient to enable clear focus and consistent energy levels during the sessions. As someone who does not drink stimulant drinks often, I noticed that even some tea during the coffee breaks was insufficient to keep my alertness during the day. This fact became evident in the days after the conference, where I slept considerably more hours than usual until I felt replenished.
Similarly, it was as if the fast-paced style of the sessions, where the presentations were relatively short followed by a quick discussion, also made it more challenging to stay focused and actively try to understand the flow of the work shown. Therefore, attempting to complete other tasks during the sessions while still trying to follow them was also extremely difficult. Ultimately, this implied that while we were at the conference, work from projects and collaborations accumulated on our to-do list. In other words, although participating in the conference was very effective at breaking the typical work routine, it also required an additional effort in the following days to re-organise timelines and make up for the apparent delays. Nonetheless, I still feel the benefits of the experience certainly outweigh such downsides.
Conclusion
In conclusion, these are some of the takeaways from my first in-person conference post-pandemic. I am genuinely looking forward to the following experience and sharing it with several of my colleagues that are also planning to go. It is intended to be a larger event, with many parallel sessions of oral and poster presentations simultaneously, so I suspect it will be even more demanding and exciting! At least I am now more familiar with the logistics involved and aware of what to expect at each stage!
Please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences at scientific conferences!
Have a great day!