Comments on: Roundtable (Part 1): Career Stages and Conferencing Strategies

By: Jennifer Porst

Jennifer Porst — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 21:47:42 +0000

Thanks for these great posts! I think the point about relaxing and going with the flow is an important one, which I felt I was better able to do this year as well. I tried to plan a schedule in advance, but since it is really impossible to attend everything I’d want to, remaining open to new possibilities and spontaneous opportunities makes the whole experience much more enjoyable.

By: Erin Copple Smith

Erin Copple Smith — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:37:25 +0000

Such a great point, Jonathan! One of the respondents for tomorrow’s post (which focuses on faculty experiences) expresses similar thoughts about the role technology plays in filling so many of the functions of conferencing! …stay tuned!

By: Jonathan Gray

Jonathan Gray — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:21:56 +0000

It’s hard for me to separate “stage of career” with “state of technology” in thinking about how I conference now vs. then. My first international conferences still involved the quaintness of people bringing photocopies of their papers to hand out, for instance, and that was pre-Flow, pre-Antenna, pre-Facebook, where conferences really were the key place to find out who was working on what right now. So maybe I just know who is working on what much better now because I’ve been around, and/or maybe the Internet tube thingies help me find out before conferences. Either way, I now find conferences as way more helpful for meeting people, and catching up. They’re one of the key sites where we can put a human face on our field and make it personable, fun, energizing, and rewarding to do what we do.