Despite the fact that I have not yet fully packed for my trip to San Francisco, I’m feeling the pressure rising on whether or not I’m prepared for each day at the conference. I haven’t been to a conference in three years and I really want to capitalize on this experience! I guess that’s why I am presenting two posters, a platform talk (and applied to present a second one), manning a table at the Education and Career Opportunities Fair, AND writing blog posts for the conference this year… I just decided to dive in headfirst! But there is a lot more to a conference than that and a lot more to getting a good experience out of it. I’ve been trying to de-rust some of the concepts and ideas I’ve had in the past, and I figured I could share what I’m doing with each of you… And to be honest, use this process to help me brainstorm other things I should be doing. So here are a few things I’m doing and/or keeping in mind while I prepare. And if I miss anything you think is important, comment or come find me and let me know, I’d welcome all the advice I can get.

1.    Talk to people.

I’m naturally more introverted, less inclined to go up to a random person (especially if they’re already talking to someone else, which they always are!) and strike up a conversation with them. So instead, I’m going to play to my strengths. For me this looks like focusing and taking notes during talks, including places for questions. I try to challenge myself to ask at least one question each session AND to have a question for each talk, whether or not I ask them. I know there are memes and flow charts out there about when you should ask questions at a conference. Dash that, if you have some questions, ask at least one. Another thing I do sometimes is to be the first person to sit at a table, and let chance decide who it is that joins me at that table and engage with them. Both of these strategies sum to this idea for me: if you make yourself visible, other people will come and strike up a conversation with you, so you don’t have to be the one to do it. That’s just one thing that works for me, it’s worth considering where your conversation strengths lie.

2.    Use the app: BPS Events

The app is a great resource for making sure that you’re fitting in all the scientific sessions that you want to go to… any session for that matter. You can browse by session dates or types, you can look through the exhibitors, or you can search by author if you know who you’re looking for. It’s really easy to add things to your schedule by simply “starring” items. For example, just go to the “Authors” tab, search for “Douglas”, scroll down and select the bottom result, then expand Show more in “Related sessions”, select each, one at a time, and click the star on the left-hand side. You’ve just starred a session that you really want to attend! After you through the rest of the sessions and have overloaded your schedule with everything you could possibly want to attend, then you can go back and pare things off (just not the things by Walker et al.)

3.    Take advantage of the Career, Education, and Outreach sessions

You can find a good list of these events also on the app. For me, I’ve starred and will be attending the First-Time Attendee Networking event Saturday evening. The Education and Career Opportunities Fair on Sunday at 1pm also looks to be a good resource. For me, I am keeping my nets wide to see how people are thinking about all of the different opportunities that are out there: How are people thinking about PhD careers, traditional and non-traditional? How are people thinking about the future of scientific funding? How are people applying new technologies to Biophysics in creative ways?

4.    Prepare for Social Functions and Breaks

Maybe you’re going to use this time to continue full steam ahead, or maybe you need this time to decompress, sit still and just allow for space to really synthesize everything you’ve learned and heard. I’ll be finishing my look through the program to see if there are good times where people I want to talk to will be in a room and I can approach them during a break. Sometimes the best collaborations are born over a cup of coffee. But by no means will that be the only way I spend these moments; I am definitely the type that will need some time to sit quietly, to think about what I’ve heard. To be honest, some of those spaces are going to be filled with some necessary practice time leading up to my talk. And that mix of things really keys up my last point…

5.    Go with the flow

In the end, I have to consciously remember that, right now, I cannot know what will be the absolute right way to plan my days at the conference. I might have a spontaneous conversation that goes through a session that I had initially wanted to attend, I might get to Tuesday and just need a longer break between sessions to prevent brain overload. So I’m preparing for my plan to go awry, and to be ok with it when it does.