How to prepare for your next scientific conference
By: Malte Borggrewe
Tags: Scientific Conference, Science, Conference, Academia, Careers

Hurray, it’s time to go to a conference! Many scientific conferences happen at this time of the year because I can’t think of a better way to spend your sunny days than inside cold congress venues and smelly lecture halls. Before going to a conference though, there are some hurdles to take.

Picking the most exciting conference that fits perfectly to your field of research is essential. But even higher on the priority list for many researchers is the location; hence lowering your scientific requirements to travel to a more exciting destination is more than acceptable.

You’ve selected your favourite conference, which happens to be on computational neuroscience although you are a molecular biologist, but it’s in Barcelona and you just love surfing (broadening your scientific mind is always a good idea). The first hurdles to be taken are registration and abstract submission. Fortunately, abstracts are highly recyclable. It’s common practice to just dig out an old abstract, change a few words, and click submit.

Registration might be a bigger hurdle because it will require you to pay the conference fees, and those can go up to a couple of hundred euros; so better find some financial support. Ask you supervisor, graduate school, or the conference organisers. In any case, you likely have to pay everything in advance, including flight, hotel, conference fees, poster prints, etc. On the bright side, once you receive your refunds (a few days-months after the conference), it will feel like a second salary, great!

Between registration and start of the conference months will go by, and you’ve probably already forgotten that your abstract was selected for a poster. You will only notice that the conference is coming closer by an increased frequency of conference-related emails. Once you receive 2 emails per week reminding you of upcoming satellite meetings, or hotel suggestions, it’s really time to prepare your poster.

Of course, it’s already too late and you just didn’t foresee how much effort it is to make a poster. The time you spend preparing the poster is 30% content, 20% design, and 50% moving figures one pixel up/down/left/right to satisfy your perfectionist needs, but then swearing on powerpoint that the alignment is still half a pixel off; damn you powerpoint!

The time to order your poster without paying a hefty fee for super-fast priority delivery has probably passed two days ago, and now you just pray that it will arrive in time. It’s best to keep your mind off the potentially inevitable calamity of going to the conference empty-handed. No need to worry, you can always print your A0 poster on 16x A4 pages and glue them together; no one will notice!

Luckily, the poster arrived in time, you’ve checked-in to your flight, boarding tickets ready, and everything is packed. It’s better not to check the scientific program in advance, as this would spoil the surprise. The last half-day at work you print 3–6 scientific articles as reading material for the journey, which will return unread; it’s the intention that counts.

At this stage all preparation is done, and all hurdles are taken. So sit back, relax, and buckle up, because you are about to enter the mystical world of scientific conferences. Good luck.