One of the more glamorous aspects of academia is the opportunity to attend conferences and if you're very lucky, you'll be able to beg, plead and bargain your way into getting some funding to help you pay your way. A conference, particularly the international kind, is a great way to meet other researchers in your area, to keep up to date with the latest findings and to get some feedback on your own studies through a poster or oral presentation.
In the first year of my PhD I attended three conferences in the glitzy and tropical locations of Hull, Cambridge and Dundee. All three were interesting, provided great networking opportunities and sparked some interesting ideas for my own work, but fundamentally I didn't need my passport to get there. This was quite disappointing, but of course I'm not just doing this for the travel opportunities...
This year I hit the jackpot! The International Investigative Interviewing Research Group (iIIRG) held their annual conference a little further afield and before I knew it my flights were paid, the hotel was booked and my bags were packed. We were going to Toronto, Canada!
Although the chance to visit somewhere new is great, conferences can be a very lonely, especially when they are abroad. Most of the researchers already know each other and have forgotten how difficult it was for them to network when they were lowly PhD students. You never really know what to do during the refreshment and lunch breaks because everyone already seems to know everyone else and if you're not a particularly outgoing person it can be difficult to strike up conversations with strangers (in this case the answer was easy = sunbathe on the rooftop patio) . Thankfully my supervisor and one of the Post-Docs from our lab group were attending, and I'd met some fellow PhD students at the conference the year before, so I didn't feel like too much of a wall flower this time as I knew there would be a few friendly faces!
If you are lucky you may have the presentation fear to contend with. I was giving one of the presentations this year and it is something I dread with every fibre of my being! At the last conference my presentation had gone well, I'd got good feedback and questions and I felt I had done a good job. As an unknown name I had been put in a smaller venue last year and the room had been pretty packed which can be the only reason I can think of as to why they decided to put me in the main room this year...with a stage...and a podium...and a lot of anxiety. If you do get a paper accepted at a conference it really is something to be celebrated but it is a nerve wracking experience for someone who fears public speaking. I may have talked a little fast this year, lost my way a little and but I think I handled the questions at the end well and again, good comments and feedback so it wasn't a complete disaster. The best thing a PhD can do is get their research and their name out in the field and hope something good comes of it later when you're on the hunt for a job. Fingers crossed someone somewhere will remember me for the right reasons.
Aside fromt these slight negatives, there's so much you can take from attending a conference. There's the excitement of getting the programme and working
out which presentations you're most interested in and having an internal
battle with yourself when there's a timetabling clash - do you go with
what you're most interested in hearing about or with what is potentially
most useful for your PhD, it's a tough decision, one not always entirely weighted towards the PhD (oops!). This years conference
had some inspiring presentations from both academics and professionals,
something that iIIRG strives to achieve, and left me with a lot of
quickly scribbled notes and a lot to think about.
Another exciting part of conferencing is that you never know who're you're going to meet. Over one lunch break I was sat with a lovely man who works in the business which is heading up the technological revolution in digital evidence gathering and storage and we had a lovely chat. You can imagine my surprise when later that day I found myself sipping ice win at the evening's social event with an FBI agent! I think I managed to play it cool ... just! You may just meet your future employer at the conference so it can be quite tiring trying to make a good impression to everyone - not a time to drink to much or sleep in.
Thankfully, I had a lot of funding to go with this exciting trip which meant I could save up my own hard earned cash and extend the trip into a HOLIDAY! My partner came along too and we took ourselves down to New York for a few days and had a few days back in Toronto before we flew home. It's a long way to go just for three days so why not take the chance to make the most of it I say!
It may be exhausting and daunting but there are so many positives to attending conferences as a PhD student that they by far outway the negatives.
Next stop on the conference bus? The Netherlands!!!!
Ciao for now
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