What is the deal with Academic Conferences, anyway?

In a comment to yesterday's post I was asked "What's the deal with academic conferences? Do you have to be within the correct academic circles to attend or is there some degree of public allowance?" I started to type up a reply, and then realized I had enough to say on the topic to warrant making a separate post on the topic.

Most academic conferences are open to anyone willing to pay the admission fee, which is often higher for people who aren't a member of the sponsoring organization. However, it is often worth purchasing a membership to the organization if you wish to attend their conference, as the amount you save on registration fees is larger than you'd spend on the membership, particularly if you are a student, since student memberships are usually quite affordable compared to the "professional" membership rate). If all you want to do is attend as a audience member, hear the talks, have coffee with the folk there, check out the info booths and see what is being sold in the booths offering stuff for sale all you need to is pay the registration fee and you are good to go.

However, If you want to share your research with others you need to look over the various sessions being offered, find one wherein your research fits the theme, prepare an abstract describing your research, submit it (and the abstract submission fee) before the deadline *and* register to attend the conference (and pay the registration fees, too). Often when submitting an abstract they ask if you prefer to do your presentation as a poster or a talk. However, even if you choose talk you might wind up doing a poster anyway; if they have too many talks offered for a session they will choose some of them to be posters instead. It is also possible that a session won't accept someone's abstract at all, but I have yet to see an example of this.

Another reason to attend conferences (at least in Geology, but possibly in other sciences, too) are the pre-, post- or mid- conference field trips. Most conferences offer 1 to 5 day trips to look at the highlights of local geology, with the trip led by people who have long worked in the area. These are excellent opportunities for networking, and, more importantly, they tend to showcase some of the best outcrops available in a region, so there are many opportunities to increase your photo collection of interesting geologic features, or to add to your sample collection (note: not all areas permit sampling—please listen to the rules at the start of the trip and respect them).

Short courses are another highlight of many conferences. There are often courses on speciality topics that are held at the conference because it saves the students the travel costs—much cheaper to attend both on one trip than to do to separate trips. Note that field trips and short courses are usually priced separately from the conference registration. Luckily, students who enjoy funding that includes conference attendance can usually attend courses and/or field trips without having to pay for them out of pocket (or, at least get reimbursed afterwards).

The final reason to attend conferences is the social aspect. This varies from one to the next, but I have seen offerings ranging from Ice Breaker Cocktail nights, to Conference Dinners, to Ceilidh Dances, to Choir rehearsals/performances to sporting events.

I may have missed the GSA meeting, but…

I just saw a post by Life in a Plane Light which really makes me wish that I had been able to attend the Fall GSA meeting this year. As a metamorphic petrologist I love garnet. Sure, it is a pretty mineral, but the usefulness of this mineral in learning about the history of metamorphic rocks is what makes it truly fascinating. Fortunately, while I may not have been able to attend the session on Garnet and Its Use in Unraveling Metamorphic and Tectonic Processes , the abstracts are available on line to read at will. I've just done well more than my 1000 words of reading from the geologic literature reading these abstracts, and wondering why I hadn't thought of looking at the program sooner. Just because one can't attend a meeting doesn't mean one can't benefit from the information that is shared there.

Rock Painting at IMA

At the IMA2010 Conference this year they had a variety of things scheduled in addition to Science. There were sporting events, music performances, and rock painting!

I chose to do a free-hand interlace knot:

The IMA Medalist is a snappy dresser

My interest in clothing and fashion is normally restricted to 12th Century and earlier. I just don’t find the trends that fashion have gone through since then to be pretty. However, I couldn’t help but notice the beautiful black linen which formed the suit worn by Frank Hawthorne, winner of the IMA Medal for Outstanding Contributions in Mineralogy Research. Most modern men’s suits are polyester if they are cheap (and how they can tolerate to wear such a non-breathable fibre is beyond me), or wool if they are nice (much better!), but his is the first I’ve seen in linen (one of my favorite fibers), and despite being in a cut which doesn’t interest me, I couldn’t help but admire the colour (black shirt, black jacket, black trousers, all of a lovely, dark, shiny, new looking shade), and even thought the colour of the dark purple tie looked nice in contrast with the rest of the outfit. (However, I still don’t like the shape and location of ties. What is wrong with nice, contrasting colour collar and hems, like were used in part of the Middle Ages?)

But enough about clothing. What about his talk? That was fascinating. He managed to put an awful lot of very complex information into a fairly short amount of time, and while most of it was totally new information to me, he did it in such a way as I felt like I understood what he was saying the whole time.

His topic was from theoretical mineralogy, focusing on the bond-topological basis of structure stability and mineral reactions. He explained how the bonds between atoms in a mineral can be used to predict the stability of a compound. For simple atoms it is necessary that that the atoms on either side of a bond have roughly matching levels of acidity or baseness, making predictions easy—if the cation and anion involved have just about as much level of acid as base, then the molecule will be stable. He also demonstrated how this principal can be extrapolated up to very complex mineral structures, but while it made sense looking at it as he spoke, I’ll not try to explain it now without the diagrams in front of me.

IMA continuted

First of all, I offer thanks to Tuff Cookie over at Magma Cum Laude for resurrecting her In the Humorous Vein series. It had been too long since one of her inspirational posters.

The busy schedule that is a week spent at a conference continues. I succeeded in getting my poster printed on time to put it on the poster board today (Thanks to Robert, the person in charge of helping IMA conference attendees with, well, everything, near as I can tell.)

One of the highlights of Tuesday’s lectures for me was the Element’s lecture by Nigel Kelly on Zircon. Anyone who saw the Zircon issue of the Elements magazine will recall what a useful (and pretty) mineral zircon is. Even though (or because of?) the fact that much of the information in the talk was review for me, having read that issue cover-to-cover I very much enjoyed the talk.

Here is the list of talks to which I’ve actually made it on Monday and Tuesday. There were others which sounded interesting, but, alas, the interesting talks in different areas of specialization often conflict with one another. It was also necessary to miss a few I’d have liked to attend while dealing with the logistics of actually getting my poster printed.

From the session MH111 History of mineralogy: The role of the Carpathian region in the 18th century:

Mottana, A.

The tradition of Theophrastus’ “On Stones” during the early stages of modern mineral science

Rózsa, P.

Sir James Hall’s visit in Schemnitz

Viczián, I.

Letters of German naturalists to Domokos: Teleki, the first president of the Jena Mineralogical Society

From the session H112 The scientific value of mineral beauty:

Garcia-Ruiz, J.M., Canals, A., Villasuso, R., Van Driessche, A.E.S. & Otálora, F.

On the formation of giant crystals of gypsum: the science behind beauty

Gilg, H.A., Krüger, Y., Taubald, H., Morteani, G. & Frenz, M.

Genesis of amethyst geodes at Ametista do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Giuliani, G.

Emerald gastropod fossils from the Mantecanã mine (Gachalà district, Colombia): a record of the recipe for Colombian emerald formation

Feneyrol, J., Giuliani, G., Ohnenstetter, D., Galoisy, L. & Pardieu, V.

Is the V/Cr ratio a fingerprint of the geographical origin of 'tsavorite' in the Mozambique Belt?

From the session: MH110G – Mineral museums and Historical mineralogy

Müller, A., Rumsey, M. & Ihlen, P.

Historical minerals from the Evje-Iveland pegmatites at the Natural History Museum in London

Langhof, J.

Early 19th century scientific networking – a study in Jacob Berzelius’ mineral collection

From the session: GM72 – Accessory minerals: Tracers of magmatic and metamorphic evolution

Harlov, D.E., Williams, M., Jercinovic, M., Budzyn, B. & Hetherington, C.

Partial alteration of monazite and xenotime during mineral-fluid interaction: implications for geochronology

Finger, F., Dunkley, D. & Knop, E.

Multiple phases of monazite growth in the South Bohemian HP-HT granulites: a chance to constrain the entire timing of metamorphic evolution from subduction to exhumation by Th-U-Pb geochronometry?

Krenn, E. & Finger, F.

Unusually yttrium rich monazite with 6-14 wt.% Y2O3 in a granulite from the Bohemian Massif: implications for monazite-xenotime miscibility gap thermometry

Uher, P., Dianiška, I., Bačík, P., Ondrejka, M., Pršek, J. & Zubaj, R.

Gadolinite and crichtonite group minerals: breakdown products of primary monazite and xenotime in granitic and metamorphic rocks

Today is my poster session—we are meant to be at our posters from 14:00 to 16:00. However, today, at 14:00 is also the second rehersal of the IMA 210 Choir. Therefore I’ve written a note stating that it isn’t too late to join the choir, and inviting one and all to join the author of this poster at the 2nd rehearsal, and promising to return to the poster promptly after rehearsal.

first day of IMA2010

Today is the first full day of lectures at the International Mineral Association’s 2010 Congress in Budapest. I spent the morning attending lectures on the topic of History. The first talk of the day was _The tradition of Theoprastus’ “On Stones” during the early stages of modern mineral science_ by A. Mottana.

He spoke on the ancient text written by Theoprastus usually called “De Lapidibus”, or “On Stones”, which was written around 313-305 BC. Its arrival to Italy in 1427, brought from Constantinople to Florence by Trancaso Filefo, was one of the important parts of the resurgence/rediscovery of ancient learning in the Renaissance, being the first entire book written on stones and minerals. The source of the document that arrived in Italy in 1427 is thought to have been the Vaticanus graecus 1302, a codex written in Byzantium c. 1300-30.

The lecture opened with a definition of the period of the Renassiance, which started in Italy in 1392 when Manuel Chrysoliora was appointed to teach Greek Language & Literature at the University in Florence, and ended in 1611 when Johannes Keppler published Strena Seu de Nive Sexangula, which was the first mathematical text on crystal structure, and thus an important start to the age of science. From there he touched on the various Renaissance scholars who used this source in their own work, and who did translations, and when. The talk was fascinating, but due to the format (only 20 minutes available) it was necessary for him to hurry over the latter portion of the talk, and my note-taking didn’t keep up. (Any errors in the above are due to my rusty note-taking skills, and not to the speaker).

My flight to Budapest

I flew to Budapest this morning, to attend the upcoming IMA2010 Conference (Aug. 21-27, Budapest). When I finally turned on the computer this evening there was an e-mail from the conference organizers announcing that this event “includes in its programme 13 plenary lectures: seven IMA2010 Plenary talks and six Elements5 talks (the latter celebrating the 5th anniversary of our excellent journal). The topics cover all representative areas, and they are tailored for a broad audience, while the authors are well-recognized experts in their fields, but also attractive speakers.” They also announce that those of you who weren’t able to come out for the meeting can still follow along at home by listing to their live web casting (end public service announcement).

Because I had a morning flight it was necessary to leave my home at 04:00 to begin my journey to the airport. Therefore I decided to just stay up all night, thinking “I can sleep on the plane”. However, what I failed to consider was that the flight path went along the south side of the Alps, for a rather large portion of the range’s extent. Consequently, while I did nap in the bus on the way to the airport, and at the airport itself, I spent the flight with my eyes focused out the window, enjoying the lovely view. Some of the peaks in the second row in still have snow on them, which sight is balm to eyes that have had to endure summer’s heat. I have no idea where I’ll be going when my current contract ends, but I sure hope it is somewhere that I can see (and walk in!) mountains on a daily basis.

Marie Curie Conference

I first heard about the post-doc position I now hold from an e-mail to the geo-metamorphic email list, and it wasn’t until I received a copy of the contract that I found out that by accepting the position I was becoming a Marie Curie Fellow. Since my very favorite book when I was a child was my copy of a children’s version of Madame Curie, a bibliography written in 1938 by her daughter Eve, I was quite delighted to find out that my funding is associated with such an amazing woman. Spending my childhood reading (over and over) about her love of learning, and how much she sacrificed in her youth to be able to attend University was probably a factor in my own love of learning and drive to attend University.

One of my favorite glimpses into her personality takes place after she has, after years of hard work, managed to isolate the element radium from pitchblende ore. Soon after that accomplishment was published she and her husband, Pierre, who had abandoned his own research to assist her with hers when he realized how important her work was, received a letter from a fellow scientist asking them to please share with him the details of the process so that he, too, could obtain pure radium for his studies. She and Pierre discuss it, acknowledging that since they invented the process they could charge people money to share the details. Had they gone that path they would have likely become quite rich thereby. However, they both agreed that in science it is far more important to freely share knowledge than to sell it—selling ideas was simply not appropriate in their minds.

I very much agree with them on this point. Consequently, the couple of hours of lectures at this week’s conference for Marie Curie Fellows (held in conjunction with the EuroScience Open Forum) which focused upon questions on intellectual property and the process of obtaining (and selling) patents rubbed me the wrong way. While I have no doubt that if Marie could know that there are 1000’s (I guess—there were over 400 of us at the conference) of people who are receiving funding to do research in other countries in her name she would feel honoured and delighted that so many talented scientists were getting such good opportunities, I also feel that she would not have approved of the message presented by those two speakers or who seemed, to me, to be equating science with an opportunity to gain financial profit.

Try and try again

Over the past couple of months I’ve been doing a fair bit of travel for conferences, short course, and writing workshop. Each meeting has been inspirational; each has resulted in additions to the list of things I want to accomplish in terms of research, data analysis, and writing papers for publication. However, the time I spend out of town for each of these meetings, combined with sight-seeing and exploring each new city ± time spent with friends at each location has meant that despite my inclination towards these tasks, the actual number of hours spent engaged in accomplishing them is distressingly low.

This is partially due to the amount of time it takes to arrange the logistics of travel—booking flights, arranging accommodation, packing, etc. and to the amount of time the travel itself takes up. Alas, my computer does not lend itself to in-flight use which so many fellow travelers accomplish—my computer has a battery which holds a charge long enough to properly shut down in case of a power-failure, but not for long enough to be worth turning the computer on unless I have somewhere I can obtain a steady stream of fresh electricity to keep the computer happy. For those of us flying budget airlines, this is not yet an option on flights. Likewise, returning home from a week spent elsewhere results in many urgent small tasks that need doing promptly after my return, all of which add up to not much progress being made on the above mentioned tasks inspired by the meetings.

Fortunately, other than one short trip during the week next week to finally meet in person the people with whom I collaborated on a paper a few years back, I’ve no trips planed until the end of the month. Therefore I state publicly here before you all that my goal is to not only get my next experiment downloaded, polished and ready for my scheduled microprobe analysis next week, but to also finish up at least one of the papers in progress and send it off to my erstwhile advisor for comment before submitting it. Readers who have been following my posts for a while might feel compelled to point out that I’ve stated that particular goal hitherto, but then gotten distracted preparing for upcoming talks on my current research. It is time to try again!

Conference ending; one last bike trip up the Danube before heading off

Today was the final day of the EGU conference. It has been a very hectic, crowded week; on their web page they say “The EGU General Assembly 2010 was a great success with 4,431 oral and 9,370 poster presentations in 594 sessions. More than 10,000 scientists participated in the conference”. Now that most of the sessions are over the hall is quiet, and it is easy to find a table near an electrical outlet, and therefore to blog in comfort.

I spent the morning attending the session on Subduction zone dynamics: A slab's journey in the upper and lower mantle. Unsurprisingly, most of the talks had to do with numerical modeling of subduction—such a high percentage of them that one guy felt compelled to apologize for offering a talk based on geochemical data from real rocks. I, for one, was delighted to hear his talk—while the pretty pictures and movies of what may be happening in the subjection process is certainly interesting, hearing details about real rocks and what we can infer from their chemistry is even more interesting.

Now it is time for me to shut down the computer, enjoy one final bike-ride along the pretty bike path.

Comparing this weeks EGU meeting with December’s AGU meeting

Having attended AGU in San Francisco in December, and being at EGU in Vienna this week, it is interesting to compare and contrast the two conferences. Both conferences offered the ability to create a “personal program” by browsing the web page or searching for specific key words, and clicking upon all talks/posters which sound interesting. Then with the push of one button it created a printout of everything I wished to attend, organized by day and time. I recall thinking at the time that AGU didn’t seem to have much of interest in the way of metamorphic or experimental petrology. Looking back on my personal program from that meeting, I count four talks and 26 posters on my personal program (plus two other talks on educational topics that I didn’t actually make it to). For EGU my personal program contains 27 talks and 60 posters.

Are there really that many more people in Europe working in fields which sound interesting to me, or have I become better at choosing search terms? Come to think of it, while I’ve not done a count, I have a vague impression that more of the authors of papers I’ve been reading are based in Europe, India, or Asia than in the US, so perhaps there really is a difference in focus between the two organizations.

One place where AGU excelled over EGU was the facilities they provided for internet access. Both organizations provided free wireless access, but AGU set up long tables and chairs, with power strips in sufficient quantity for everyone who wanted to use their own computer to do so without relying on battery power, and there were also cables available for internet access for those of us who preferred not to, or couldn’t use wireless. At EGU those of us who don’t have reliable computer batteries are limited to the occasional wall plug. While there are some low tables scattered near the food courts, very few of them happen to be within reach of wall plugs. As a result it is a common sight to see people sitting on the floor near an outlet, computer in lap. Occasionally one of the chairs will be dragged to an outlet to permit the electric-dependant computer user to sit in slightly greater comfort, but still with a computer on the lap. This explains why my posts are all lagging a day behind—while lap based internet access is sufficient for reading blogs or e-mail, it is not quite comfortable enough to encourage me to type. Therefore this is being typed sitting at a desk in the home of my host, and will be posted tomorrow, when I am back at the conference and once again have internet access.

My poster session at this meeting suffered from the same dearth of eager visitors as I experienced at AGU. While I could hear many conversations at most of the other posters in my range, most of the people on site who are interested in experiments on metapelitic compositions must have looked at the poster during the day when the author wasn’t present (as I did for all of the posters I wished to see). However, I did have one person come by and talk to me about my work—he has been doing isochemical section modeling for natural samples that include talc, and hasn’t been happy with the results he’s been getting. He uses Thermocalc (I know because his poster was on my list of things to see, so I went to look at it this morning, during a time when the author wasn’t present) and asked me about the Perplex activity model for talc. I looked it up and we discussed how my experiments aren’t very well predicted by Perplex. He commented that he thought that perhaps a non-ideal model would give us both better results matching the models with reality.

Yesterday at EGU

Yesterday was the first day of EGU, the session on today’s schedule which came closest to matching my research interests was TS6.5/GD5.10/GMPV55, Ophiolites, blueschists and mélanges in convergent margin tectonics. I enjoyed the morning talks, and then checked out the vendors, where I found myself doing an impulse purchase. I now own a copy of Vernon’s Practical Guide to Rock Microstructure , a review of which is available here . I couldn’t resist the purchase, since it is full of pretty pictures of deformed rocks, and thoughts about what the physical expression of that deformation tells us about the processes which formed it.
After my shopping trip, there being no other sessions scheduled for the afternoon related to my research interest, I hoped onto my borrowed bicycle and enjoyed a lovely trip along the Danube bike path back to my friend’s house and took a much needed nap.
Now I need to get ready to attend my poster for the afternoon session, so I’ll post about today’s interesting talks tomorrow (no internet access where I’m staying). If you are at the meeting, I’ll be at XL192 from 17:00 to 19:00, come on by and say hello.

Pre-conference Adventures

I am currently enjoying time playing tourist in Vienna before the EGU conference starts next week. I am very fortunate in that I’ve got a native guide to show me around and introduce me to her friends. I few years back I met a lady through an e-mail list for people who are interested in the clothing styles which were popular in the 12th Century. She posted a question about a costume she wanted to make, so I sent her the pattern I used when I did one in that style, and we began corresponding. I’ve long admired the photos she shares of her embroidery in her blog, and it is ever so much fun to see it in person, and to try on one another’s costumes.
She’s taken me fabric shopping, to museums, and to look at the early medieval stone carvings in the local cathedral and churches. She’s hosted a gathering of people to work on sewing projects tonight, and I am having much fun hanging out with like minded new friends. Tomorrow there will be more museums, and on Monday I’ll head to the conference and enjoy lectures on one of the other subjects which interest me. I understand we will have internet access on site, so I’ll try to post highlights of the talks during lunch breaks.
In the meantime I’m enjoying the fact that I can indulge two such very different sets of interest on one trip.

Inspiring conversations

I gave a talk at the EMPG conference this afternoon. As luck would have it, my talk was scheduled just before lunch. After I spoke one gentleman* came up with an additional question. We got to talking about my current research and my PhD research, and we wound up going to lunch together and then looking at photos from my thesis. He was interested in the Tasmanian whiteschist, having read about them years ago, and he enjoyed seeing my photos of them, and the graphs of the difference between the composition of the two different appearances of the garnet in that unit. The conversation lasted for the entire 1.5 hour lunch break. It was really enjoyable, and quite inspiring. I've already downloaded a handful of papers as a result of that conversation, and I look forward to reading them.

*Yes, his name is well-known in my field, no I hadn't met him hitherto, and yes, I have read and cited his papers.

schedule printed

Thanks to the schedule planner for AGU, I’ve just printed my schedule for the event, showing all of the talks and posters I don’t wish to miss. I now have a plastic sheet protector for each day, with page one of each container showing a summary of the talks/posters I want to attend, and the other sheets showing the abstract for each. Having limited my key word searches to such concepts as metamorphism, experiments, garnets, etc. it took only 39 pages to print the schedule and abstracts (after deleting the title page and the one nearly blank page which happened to contain only the contact details for one of my co-workers here—I guess his abstract was longer than normal if that part wrapped onto the next page). Reading my 1000 words of geologic literature will be easy for the next few days, till I’ve worked my way through this pile of abstracts. Now, back to putting the finishing touches on my poster, so that I can pack this evening and fly in the morning…

Attending AGU in December

While others in the geoblogsphere are still posting about their adventures at GSA in Portland, I’ve just booked my flights for AGU in December. Anyone else planning on attending that one? It would be nice to make it to one of the geoblogger meet-ups instead of reading about them from the far side of the planet…

A tale of two Conferences

Like many scientists, I have a variety of interests, in some pretty diverse fields. The past two weeks were spent indulging two of them by attending two very different conferences.

The first conference, on Micro-Analysis, Processes, Time, was sponsored by the Mineralogical Society in the UK. Like many geological conferences, it began with a pre-conference field trip, the first stop of which I’ve already posted (and will be getting back to post about the other stops soon, now that I’m home). The conference itself had around 200 people attending (small compared to some!). The schedule was fairly typical for geology conferences, with talks running during the days (generally business hours), and people scattering to the four winds in the evenings. There were enough people presenting that Monday and Wednesday had four tracks of talks happening at once, meaning that one had to pick and choose amongst them, but, generally, things were arranged such that it is likely that if there is one talk in a session one is interested in, the others may well also appeal, meaning that I was able to simply find the appropriate room in the morning and stay put all day, rather than trying to bounce from one session to another, and risk missing the start of a talk in another room. Tuesday morning there was a single track of talks, followed by the poster session. Since my contribution for the conference was a poster, I took the time during lunch to read the other posters, so that I’d be available during the session to speak with people reading mine. I met a variety of interesting people during that afternoon session, but only had a short chat with each of them. After the conference there was a post-conference field trip (post with photos to follow). I did meet a few of my fellow field trip travelers, but the bus ride was mostly quiet or people speaking with their seat-mates, and, as it turned out, I didn’t have a seat mate.

The second conference, the Textile Forum, was quite a contrast in organizational style. This conference was set up as a setting to an experiment. The experiment was designed to quantify the changes that result in the quantity and quality of yarn spun with drop spindles with different masses and moments of inertia. Therefore the experimental part of the conference involved two one-hour sessions of spinning a day for five days in a row—each session using a different spindle whorl. As a result this conference worked on a very different schedule than the geology one. There were roughly 20 of us in attendance, from a variety of different countries.

Most of us stayed on site in the Iron-Age style “hut”, which is equipped with straw mattresses and sheepskins to supplement such bedding as we brought with us. Therefore our day would start with a communal breakfast, followed by a session wherein the spinners did their two one-hour sessions (with a break in between) and the rest of us worked on other hand-crafts and everyone chatted about any number of topics of interest before lunch, then after lunch we’d scatter to the four winds (many of them to see museums), and reconvene in the evenings for the talks, followed by social time spent around a campfire before sleeping.

The combination of the very different time-schedule for the conference, with the much smaller number of attendees resulted in the opportunity to get to know my fellow Medieval Textile enthusiasts much better than I did any of the geologists at the first conference. I will be happy to recognize the geologists at all next time I see them, but I now call many of the textile people friends. In short, while I found both conferences very enjoyable, with many interesting things learned, I think that I liked the format of the textile conference much better. Alas, off of the top of my head I can’t really think of a way to do a parallel sort of thing in the geosciences. What task do geologists do that would permit them to gather in a small group around a table, doing said task while conversing with one another? And what would it take to get them to do it? The spinners did their spinning (with some very oddly shaped/sized/weighted spindles “in the name of science” to see if there is a difference in how spindles behave which isn’t directly related to the spinner. But when geologists do experiments it usually involves setting something up and then going away for a period of time. This practice wouldn’t be conducive to a similar environment as was achieved in the Textile forum.

pre-conference homework

Having read more than one comment on Female Science Professor’s blog about students who failed to recognize the name of an important scientist in their field when meeting them at a conference, I decided that in addition to preparing a poster summarizing some of my recent research to present at a conference I’ll be attending later this month, I should also have an advance list at the list of delegates who are attending the conference, since the conference web page was nice enough to include one.

Comparing that list with the (Endnote) list of papers I’ve read in the course of my research reveals 10 names of people whose work I’ve consulted who will be attending the same conference as I. I now have a list of those names, and which papers of theirs I’ve got, so I can glance at them again between now and the start of the conference and be reminded of what sort of topics they research. With luck, being familiar with their work will give me topic(s) of conversation should I actually meet them in person, which will be one way to prevent shyness from keeping me in a corner not speaking to anyone. (Mine is the sort of shyness which only manifests itself if I think I don’t know anyone present.)

In the course of compiling this list there were a few people whose addresses in the program do not match the address on the paper I’ve got, so for those people I checked their department web page to see if it listed their publications or research interests, to make certain that the name of the attendee is, in fact, the same person who wrote the paper. This task was worth doing, as I found one where it turns out to be someone with the same name, but different research interests, and another where the list of the things she likes to research is very similar to my own. Therefore she might be an interesting person to speak with about her research.

If I find myself with the time/energy between now and the start of the conference, I may also go through the program looking for interesting sounding talks, not only to mark the ones I don’t wish to miss, but also to see if those authors have papers published which I’d also like to read, but haven’t seen yet. Not that I need more papers, the list of things in my “to read” pile will keep me doing my 1000 words a day of reading for a long time yet.

(Note: for those of you keeping track of such things, I’ve finally settled in to my new location sufficiently that my 1000 a day is, once again, a habit. 17 days in a row, and counting. It isn’t much, yet, but it is a start. Perhaps I might even start blogging regularly again.)