The perks of going to conferences early in your career

Since I started visiting conferences, I have always been amongst the youngest attendants, if not youngest, at least academically. I never quite understood why that was. Of course, I am lucky enough to be in a very supportive lab that encourages and supports its master’s students to visit and present at conferences, and it’s hard to tell if I had gone and looked up conferences by myself if that wasn’t the case. Maybe this is the reason for the absence for students that haven’t started their PhD yet, maybe all it takes is a push, somebody telling them that it is a good idea to go to a conference that early in their career. If you’re an undergraduate/master’s student and this is true for you, here’s the push: go to a conference, it’s worth it! 

Written by Lea Prox
@Lea_prox

6 good reasons to go to a conference

1. People: The number one reason really. This is the best opportunity to meet people in person you always wanted to talk to and make new friends with similar interests. Building up a good network with members of your field outside of your university is incredibly important. It can help you later on to find collaborators or could be useful when you’re applying for positions.
   
2. Presence: Even if you won’t be able to talk to everybody at the conference, it can be helpful to stick your name and your face out there. 
   
3. See the current state of your field: With the revision process, most studies you will read have often been conducted at least a year ago. At conferences, you can get insights into the current state of your field, hear questions others are asking, and get inspiration for your own research. 
   
4. Gain confidence: If you are presenting a poster or even a talk you gain experience and lose your fear. While the audiences I have experienced so far are generally nothing to be afraid of, you have the additional advantage that people might have fewer expectations of you if you let them know right at the beginning that you’re undergraduate/master’s student and are then more likely to positively surprise them than to disappoint
5. Get insight into how conferences work: Even if you are not presenting, it is a good chance just to see how conferences work. When you’ll have your first presentation one day, it’s good to have a general feel of what is expected. What makes a good poster? How formal is the general tone? Etc.
   
6. Your CV: And if those reasons weren’t enough, a presentation at a conference also shows nicely on your CV.
   
   

Mine and Others' Experiences
 
Lea – Going to a conference alone

After having attended a few conferences with my lab or other people I know, this year I went to the European Conference on Behavioural Biology on my own, after my lab mate, who was going to come along, was denied her visa for the UK. This turned out to be a very good experience as it forced me to get to know new people. If you don’t know anyone it is often tempting to just stick around to the people you came to the conference with, but this might keep you from growing your circle wider. As I was on my own, I didn’t have another chance and from the first day on joined different groups from different labs for social events and lunches. It was a good opportunity to chat about science in different groups, hear new opinions on my own research and find inspiration. The more people I had talked to, the more confident I got, and in the end I had made quite a few new conference friends. Of course, it can be helpful to have your lab members and supervisors around to introduce you to people you want to talk to, but if you take the courage to walk up to them by yourself, this can be even more rewarding.
 
James

I went to two conferences before the start of my PhD: one about hallway through my master’s thesis, and another in the months shortly after completing that degree. The first was small but invaluable for helping me practice talking about my own science with an unfamiliar audience and I think my work would have been worse-off without the feedback I received at such a crucial stage in my thesis project. The second conference was much larger and, once again, came at a crucial period in my academic development. This time, presenting the finished work from my master’s and with a head full of new ideas for the PhD I was about to start, I was really able to discover something of my own “identity” as a researcher in the larger community, and not just in the context of my parent lab (although their presence at the same conference definitely helped calm my jitters leading up to my first proper presentation).
 
Stephen

I went to a conference in the first few months of starting my PhD, and while it was pretty daunting, I found it to be a genuinely worthwhile experience. Being thrust into an environment full of people who were thinking about all of the same types of questions as me, but using different systems and approaches, really opened my eyes to the world I was about to spend three years doing a PhD in. This conference I went to was quite specific (a GRC on Predator-Prey Interactions), so I was able to go to a ton of incredibly relevant talks from researchers whose work I’d spent the past few years reading. I also had opportunity to speak with Postdocs and PhDs over posters, which worked to catalyse many of my own ideas into more fully-formed concepts. Ultimately, the conference talks, posters and conversations with other researchers provided a great foundation of knowledge and ideas that I used to build my entire PhD.


Practical thoughts

How do I get to a conference?
If you are working on a project or are about to finish your thesis, ask your supervisor about any conferences they might be attending that could be relevant to you as well. They will usually be happy for you to present your study as a poster and might even fund the costs. There is also usually funding available students can apply to, to cover their travel costs if they are presenting. You can also look for yourself for small conferences or symposia that aren’t as expensive as big ones. During my undergraduate, I attended the ISFAS in Nuremberg which is a small symposium mainly directed at students about research and conservation of mammals in South America. With only about ten talks and few workshops it was the smallest symposium I ever attended, which was nice as a start and, with 20 € conference fees, really affordable. If you are based at a university or institute that has conferences of its own, you can also ask the conference planning committee if they need volunteers. This way you not only get valuable insights into the organizational part but will be able to attend the conference and many of its talks for free.

How do I get to talk to people relevant to me?
In general, check the “line-up” of the conference before you go and at least look up the plenary speakers and see what they’re working on if you don’t know already. There might be people that could be interesting for you to meet that you haven’t heard of yet. It also makes sense to skim through the titles of the talks and posters and look up the people that seem to have interests related to yours and later maybe track them down at the conference. If you’re hoping to talk to any of the attendants with “big names”, it might be difficult to catch them as most likely there will be more people trying to do the same, often further along in their career than you are. If you have a particular question you want to discuss with them, it might be wise to send them an e-mail beforehand and ask them to meet you for lunch on one of the days. Otherwise, if you’re visiting a conference with your lab, you can ask your supervisors if they could introduce you to someone if they know them. Another opportunity is also to get to know the students from a particular lab you’re interested in and ask them if they could introduce you to their supervisor if there is an opportunity.