The post is a share of PIE (Practices, Insights and Experiences)

I have been to quite many events, mainly conferences. I have a bag full of badges.

Conferences are most useful when building network. Learning new things in research field. One listen to talks, meet new researchers. Understands more in our research area. From interaction point of view, the poster session is more useful than oral talks (see previous PIE-letter, or visit MSCA Sweden web page under Practices, Insights and Experiences). The discussion is more fruitful by posters.

For building network, the next step is closer format discussion. When I had my first grants as PI, we had projects meetings. Partners in one Nordic project that I coordinated were in Sweden, Denmark and Germany (Germany was additional country in a call). So then I organized meetings. Half day was in general sufficient. Since they were travelling, I added others to meeting and called it workshop. Others also presented, there was interaction, broadening in topic area. From practical point of view it had to be two days, lunch to lunch. Then we had lunches, coffee breaks, and dinner together. There was extra discussion at those.

I started to run those regularly, and we had different hosts. Denmark, and Germany. Next also Japan because our project was related to Japanese initiative in silicon carbide as new LED material. We organized symposiums at E-MRS three times. After some years this lost momentum because funding was nog continued (we applied of course). Core consortium got new ideas based on learnings, we applied in those and got new projects. Still after 15 years we have a core consortium that collaborates. Latest project is an EIC Pathfinder.

Pandemic made everyone to learn online tools. So I started to have forums in certain topics of my interest and research area. People discuss and new ideas emerged. Sometimes there is forum with presentation. Sometimes forum as open meeting: a topic and we meet to discuss, no presentation.

Conferences are very one direction communication. 12 minute presentation and 3 minute question. Conference has certain focus, but being fairly broad in general. Workshops are more focussed in certain area. So I learned that conferences is mainly building network, workshops is deepen network in focussed areas. Because it is smaller format. Forum is complementary because we can do online, smaller than workshop and even more discussion, especially when there is no presentation.

Conferences have planned agenda. That leaves less room for new. Workshops have also agenda but has more time for time in between presentations. Forum has more exchange. These are very complementary. For career progression, the workshops and forums are more useful. Consortium ideas come from those, not conferences.

Key learning: be most active by forums and workshop. They have more interaction in topic that can grow to projects and funding. Builds relevant personal network more than shallow one from conferences. Being organizer increases visibility of yourself. Leave plenty of room for the unexpected (by generous time for discussion part).

Photo: my collected badges.

By Mikael Syväjärvi