Getting the most of out a scientific conference

I remember not knowing what to expect when I first went to a conference, just a few months after starting grad school. My labmates and my advisor reassured me that it all would be fun and good, but showing up to a thing where there are thousands of people you don't know, and presentations happening simultaneously in a score of rooms, and a constant swarm off social interactions can pretty intimidating.

Here's some tips and perspectives on how to navigate a scientific conference.

There is no wrong way to attend a conference. Everybody who attends has a different experience, and what other people get out of it won't necessarily be what you get out of it. You'll get a lot of advice about all the thigns you "should" be doing. Those might be useful tips, but please know that it's impossible to do it all, and stretching yourself too thin to pack in as much as you can is counterproductive.

The primary function of conferences is social interaction. There's a reason that everybody pivoted back to in-person meetings as soon as it was safer to do so after the arrival of COVID. While the opportunity to watch and give presentations is the centerpiece of the meeting, that's not why people hop in a plane and fly across the country. It's okay to stretch yourself beyond your comfort zone. If you stay in the same field, then the people who you meet at conferences will be your colleagues for the length of your career. Some of the people you meet at your first conferences may well become some of your closest friends. Or close collaborators, or both.

Talk with everybody. It's exciting, and useful, to meet the more senior people who are doing stuff that is influencing your own work. And it's just as valuable and useful to meet peers who are working on related stuff, and unrelated stuff too. And to get to know more junior people at the meeting. This is an opportunity to savor the great variety of people and their lived experiences, and to see how your experience of science and academia compares with people at other types of institutions and working on different questions. Scientific curiosity at these meetings is important - but curiosity about other human being is just as rewarding.

Have a plan, but be flexible. The start of the day when people shuffle off to rooms to attend talks can be stressful if you don't know which rooms you want to be in and know when you want to step out of one room and catch a talk in a different room. Downloading the conference app and coming up with your schedule in the app well in advance can be reassuring, so you don't miss out on things that you're excited to see. But also, don't make yourself too beholden to this schedule. New things might pop up.

If there's someone you know you want to meet or spend time with, plan in advance. It's okay to ask someone if they're available for coffee or a meal or a chat. If a prospective advisor/mentor is at the meeting, then this not only a good thing to do but also standard and expected.

Don't feel bad when if other people look like they are having a better time than you. My first entomology meeting was in Dallas in 1994. I was 22 years old and only knew my labmates there. I probably was pretty awkward. Now I'm going to the same conference in Portland, 31 years later. I won't be awkward. I will have plenty of friends, collaborators, former mentees, and also folks who might be interested in meeting me for the first time, because I'm a regular around these parts. I'm a hugger (but also am big on consent). I'm going to have fun at this meeting. It's totally fine that your experience at this meeting isn't like mine. I hope you'll have a chance to make friends but it's perfectly fine to be at a conference without friends. You don't need to make friends if you don't want to. If you want to primarily go to talks, and then decompress in private for the rest of the conference, that's perfectly fine. But if you are up for socializing with new people new to you, it can be rewarding. I don't mean rewarding in a careerist sense, but I mean rewarding in a personal fulfillment and experiencing the rainbow of life sense. But I suppose yeah it's also not unrewarding for one's career to know people, too.

You belong there. You're a scientist going to scientific conference. This is your environment. Even if you haven't published a paper yet, even if you aren't even giving a presentation, and even if you aren't fully digesting all of the complex ideas in some of the talks – this is your meeting, and the society created the meeting so that you have opportunities. And if you don't understand a talk, honestly that's not your fault, it's the person giving the talk who is doing it wrong. I swear. The meetings exist to support you joining the community. It's big and fuzzy and hectic and might feel a little alienating, but you belong and folks want you to know that you belong. You're one of us.

Ask people to show you the ropes. Hopefully you have mentors and peers who will be at the conference to introduce you around, take you out to eat and brag about you. But if you don't have these people, and since they're not with you all the time, it's okay to ask other people who you just met to give you a hand. People like being supportive of newbies and we have all been there. Most people will be kind.

Conferences are a professional workplace. Conferences are not a venue for speed dating. Getting to know and making friends involves personal conversations, but know that people are there for science. Please know that it's common for women to dread conferences because of how they're going to be treated. Here's a tip: when you're interacting with a person, are you treating them the same way you would if they were a different gender? If not, you're doing it wrong. Your behavior should be no different than if you are on your own university campus – being off site doesn't mean that the rules and norms for social interactions have changed.

There is a code of conduct designed to protect you and others. If someone is making inappropriate remarks, following you around, touching you when or where you don't want to be touched, this is overtly wrong and unwelcome and this person should be reported to the appropriate party as stated in the code of conduct. There should be a phone number to text or to call. Please look out for one another, and if they're doing this to someone else, you should be reporting them too. If you're even slightly trained in bystander intervention, please don't hesitate to step in when someone is doing harm. Events like poster sessions, mixers, receptions – especially when ethanol is involved – are where this behavior comes out most frequently.

Bring snacks. Convention centers usually have expensive and unexceptional food, and you might have to wander a ways to get a granola bar or a banana or something.

Maybe have a little power bank. With the conference program on your phone, it can hog energy, especially when not on wifi. And if you're going out for dinner, then to a bar or something afterwards... just make sure your phone will have enough juice.

I hope you can bring your whole self. These conferences can be offputting because there will be a lot of homogeneity, and if your identity or appearance doesn't fit norms, then you might feel a need to be different to fit in. I'm hoping that you feel comfortable and welcome enough that you feel that you can be yourself and your full self. There are bunch of people in every academic society who are pushing for change to make sure that there is genuine diversity and inclusion. The best way to help those efforts is to be who you are which reinforces that those efforts are paying off by making this space more representative. People sometimes joke that you can tell who belongs to the conference while walking around the town because of how they look, even if they don't have their nametag on. I hope those days are over, because anybody who wants to be with the conference should be at the conference. Some societies are doing better than others – I think Entomology has come a long long way and I'm proud of our progress, and others need more work. Anyhow, I hope you feel safe enough that you don't need to filter yourself in advance, for your sake and for the richness of our community.