Difference between revisions of "Conferences"

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P.S.: Now coming to my conclusion. Personally, I perceive conferences as a severe waste of resources, energy and time. My brain gets more from a paper, which I can read at the most suitable speed for my brain. Also, listening for a whole day is super exhausting to me, which adds to the typical jet-lag of travel fatigue I have. While exchange with people is generally very nice, conferences offer mostly shallow exchanges to me due to time constraints. Also, I have trouble concentrating when too many people talk at the same time, which during the breaks just happens. Still, getting to conferences always costs a lot of time and resources. Right now I decided to focus on other goals, and need to cut back on certain things. Due to my personal perception of conferences, this was an easy choice. I look forward to an increasingly changed landscape of conferences, with more interactivity, time for exchange, and more focus and synchronicity with my brain if at all possible. Regarding the last item, I am unsure.  
 
P.S.: Now coming to my conclusion. Personally, I perceive conferences as a severe waste of resources, energy and time. My brain gets more from a paper, which I can read at the most suitable speed for my brain. Also, listening for a whole day is super exhausting to me, which adds to the typical jet-lag of travel fatigue I have. While exchange with people is generally very nice, conferences offer mostly shallow exchanges to me due to time constraints. Also, I have trouble concentrating when too many people talk at the same time, which during the breaks just happens. Still, getting to conferences always costs a lot of time and resources. Right now I decided to focus on other goals, and need to cut back on certain things. Due to my personal perception of conferences, this was an easy choice. I look forward to an increasingly changed landscape of conferences, with more interactivity, time for exchange, and more focus and synchronicity with my brain if at all possible. Regarding the last item, I am unsure.  
Taken together, conferences are a nice space to get feedback, interact with colleagues, network, see what is happening, and be energised. Fpr junior career scientists conferences are a must, as you need to connect, become known and maybe meet your future boss. Ultimately it depends on each and every single one what we make of this. I am still searching for my niche, to this end.  
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Taken together, conferences are a nice space to get feedback, interact with colleagues, network, see what is happening, and be energised. For junior career scientists conferences are a must, as you need to connect, become known and maybe meet your future boss. Ultimately it depends on each and every single one what we make of this. I am still searching for my niche, to this end.  
  
  

Latest revision as of 10:14, 10 June 2025

Type Team Size
Me, Myself and I Group Collaboration The Academic System Software 1 2-10 11-30 30+

Scientific conferences

Conferences are where scientists come together and exchange about their latest results. Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere is the most important conference season, when many scientists spend some time together and get to know each other and the respective results. Conferences were in the past of places of great innovation, and in the 1950s and 1960s often a place for progress. Change was in the air, and conferences were the places where this change was not only tangible, but literally made by the participants. While peer-review publications and its associated exponential publication growths changed the culture of conferences profoundly, there is a certain renaissance concerning the importance of the tech bubble. This is often associated with the speed of their development, an argument I do not consider to be really true. Instead are many of the tech folks, but also rather artsy academic communities, just not aiming their focus on something else, and do not jump onto the bandwagon of the ever growing exponential pile of peer-reviewed papers. The economists are among the last who preserved a conference culture where papers are actually presented before they are published, thereby receiving often valuable feedback, and increasing the status of conferences to true spaces of exchange. This article attempts to give you an overview on the diversity of conferences, and how these can matter to you. There is a true diversity of formats out there, and only experiencing it yourself will do true justice to the topic. Still, let us jump in and discuss some starting points.

Large or small conferences?

There are large conferences, and small conferences. Larger ones are often more general, or represent the meeting of some large branch of science. Smaller ones are often more focussed, and may offer a more specific focus. While some conferences may host more than a thousand people, smaller ones may be nor more than a few dozen people. Also, some conferences are very interactive, while other conferences have more passive attendees. Most conferences have the largest share of people talks, often for 10-15 minutes. This may demand many parallel sessions, where people often rush from session to session. Some of these large conferences may feel like cattle markets, where you can meet your future boss or employees, but do not always have a relaxed time. Alternatively, these are long established “Society of your discipline” conferences, which follow a certain procedural experience and value canon, but are more often than not small endeavors. Ideally, one would look for a conference with a high specificity to one's own focus, may it be a focussed small one, or a large one where you find your own sub-community. Getting lost, feeling overwhelmed at bigger ones, the question is whether you get a good community. Certain people are always there, it can be nice to have these connections. Smaller conferences are really great to build some momentum for your own research. Younger researchers may receive valuable feedback, which can be a great energy boost for your work. Some conferences are also designed to implement workshops that can help you gain experience, e.g. in technical skills. Some conferences are more like Ashrams, and one has to know if you are interested in this kind of conference. If you have been to one, you know what I mean. This brings us to the next chapter, normal vs. non-normal conferences.

Normal vs. non-normal conferences

We already discussed conferences that are gatherings of scientific societies, which often date back decades and have long established rites and traditions. With such procedural rigidity comes often a clear line of thinking, focussed on a specific branch of science. This may be highly relevant for most scientists, which are after all normal scientists. There, you find the deep focus you need to exchange with people with a like-minded focus. Yet focus is not only defined by discipline, but also by topics, theories or even the very absence of a disciplinary focus. Energy focussed conferences may host a diversity of disciplines, and climate change conferences unite under the umbrella term of one common goal: a broad diversity of scientists and even policy makers. And then there are post-normal conferences, who live off the very critique of the normal sciences. Hence it is highly relevant to know what you let yourself into. It is usually good to try a diversity along a gradient, and sample if you are more the focussed normal science kind of person, or if you are more interested in another bubble. Yet this is what conferences are typically about, a bubble exchanging within itself. Wherever you go, remember you are part of such a bubble. A best proxy now is to know which bubble a certain conference belongs to, who are the folks organizing it, and how does it speak to your mind?

Conferences as rooms for exchange

There are uncountable ways to organize and facilitate conferences. In the old days conferences are rumored to have been more exciting, open debates with controversial discussion and proposals that shocked the scientific community. This has become a rare experience these days, as most conferences are now merely producing any output at all. There are exceptions, but make no mistake, if you are not leading a conference, your output from it may be a mere footnote in a collection of academic texts. Yet more and more conferences and their organizers have understood that no-one can follow dozens of talks every day, and have thus started to make their venues more interactive and even exciting. Such room for exchange may be a nice starting point for a true collaboration, and can serve also as a space for learning. Some conferences thus managed to reinvent the old declarations known from conferences before the internet into a novel publication that sometimes contains hundreds of co-authors, often all participants of the conference. These papers are highly cited, which is not surprising given that there are so many co-authors who then quote themselves. I consider such articles to be highly valuable as they often manage to capture the spirit of a time and place. Yet I want to offer another perspective, this time as a supervisor of many PhD-students: Conferences can be venues of escape. A PhD student may do anything to do anything but their PhD papers. If this is the case, the question arises what the specific conference visit aims to do. Every PhD needs to strike a balance, and while 1-2 conferences per year seem quite the right reward and representation for a hard working PhD, half a dozen conferences may be beyond the point. Hence conferences can be valuable places to exchange if all else is well underway. Another problem that may arise out of the participation at a conference is an artificial feeling of being hyped through the conference, but then falling into a hole afterwards. While this may seem counterintuitive, I witnessed more than a few PhDs being completely energized after the conference, and this led actually to nothing, at least in the short run. While this is a gross simplification of many diverse dynamics at play, supervisors should be alert to their students and how to disseminate their experiences best after a conference.

Goal of the conference: A talk, a poster of a paper?

Many conferences give you the possibility to apply for a talk, yet these days much is downgraded to a poster. This is a tricky situation. Just as the whole publication circus became an exponential endeavor in itself, many conferences are overburdened with submissions. A poster can represent a valuable stepping stone for a PhD to reduce their work into a form of presentable poster. This can be a vital stepping stone towards difficult decisions that are the everyday bread and butter of PhD struggles. Talks can be equally a great challenge, but should be diligently rehearsed. This can be a good practice for a dissertation defense, even if it usually only presents one paper instead of several. Such talks are more often than not only lasting 12 minutes, and need to be spot on in terms of timing. Conferences can also be great since many people are presenting there, and it can help to see that what others achieve is also possible for you, with practice. Hence see this as a training ground for larger settings, which we all face sooner or later. Yet the cleverest form I ever heard of someone utilizing conferences was made by a colleague who targeted silverbacks from the community to write a joined paper. He went to several conferences to target these experienced academics to recruit them as co-authors based on an early draft he had written. The paper was already well structured and had a clear and timely focus. Now it is highly cited, proving the point that conferences can be great places to connect with other scientists.

Miscellaneous other parameters of conferences

Scientific conferences not only cost time and money, but also carbon footprint. There are numerous calculations of the footprint of diverse conferences, yet what is clear is that the average scientists can easily double their carbon footprint by jetting to a handful of conferences across the globe. Travel time is also downtime for many, who can after all work as well in a place as compared to their own office desk? A train may be more comfortable, yet is typically only an option for Europeans who live in a tiny area that is not even a continent. Other continents span far and wide, and most conferences are abroad across some great water. Flying is thus usually the main means of transportation. There can be exceptions, as I did not travel by airplane to any conference ever, but this is not only rare but may even be harmful to your career. This brings us to a main goal for conferences - particularly for younglings and padawans, who may meet their future teachers at such conferences. There is a whole world there how you can leave a good first impression, yet this is not for me to describe. If you are the right person for a future job, then it is meant to fit. Conferences are excellent for a first contact between future collaborateurs. Yet one should not forget that conferences can be a sinkhole of time, carbon footprint and money. After all does travel also costs money that needs to be in the budget. In a project this is easier planned compared to a scholarship. Our university gives some seed funding to this end, yet not all universities do that. Conferences are hence great to engage with like minded people, and to learn to present your results, and get feedback. It is good to go to conferences to gain some experience, and draw your own conclusions on how you want to utilize conferences to serve your goals.

P.S.: Now coming to my conclusion. Personally, I perceive conferences as a severe waste of resources, energy and time. My brain gets more from a paper, which I can read at the most suitable speed for my brain. Also, listening for a whole day is super exhausting to me, which adds to the typical jet-lag of travel fatigue I have. While exchange with people is generally very nice, conferences offer mostly shallow exchanges to me due to time constraints. Also, I have trouble concentrating when too many people talk at the same time, which during the breaks just happens. Still, getting to conferences always costs a lot of time and resources. Right now I decided to focus on other goals, and need to cut back on certain things. Due to my personal perception of conferences, this was an easy choice. I look forward to an increasingly changed landscape of conferences, with more interactivity, time for exchange, and more focus and synchronicity with my brain if at all possible. Regarding the last item, I am unsure. Taken together, conferences are a nice space to get feedback, interact with colleagues, network, see what is happening, and be energised. For junior career scientists conferences are a must, as you need to connect, become known and maybe meet your future boss. Ultimately it depends on each and every single one what we make of this. I am still searching for my niche, to this end.

The author of this entry is Henrik von Wehrden.