Posts about Practices, Insights and Experiences.

A career perspective related to posters and oral presentations at conferences

What is a merit in CV and what is more useful for career are not always the same thing. As a young researcher, one desired merit related to conference presentations is oral talk. Mainly oral talks are given to established researchers, but from time to time there are also oral presentations given to a young researcher. That gives more visibility in conference booklet. Name is more pronounced instead of being in a list of poster presentations.

Certainly, chances are low for a young researcher to get an invited talk. A regular talk is the one that is relevant. If a young researcher gets invited talk or plenary, then that conference may not be a suitable one. Regular talks are typically 12 minutes presentation and 3 minutes for questions. In too many cases, a question is about something that was not understood. A minute or even two are gone. Next comes a relevant question that may be interesting to learn from. Discussions starts, and session chair keeps track of time. At some point after overtime of the allocated 15 minutes, chair interrupts the discussion and suggests that the discussion can continue at the next break. Obviously the audience will not have the possibility to listen and have insights from that discussion.

So what about a poster? Poster sessions are longer. Not one after one like in oral talks session, all posters are available at the same time. People walk around and stop at posters with an interesting title. Some ask a question. Maybe still some have not understood, but most who ask knows what poster is about and ask relevant questions. There will be a fruitful discussion for some time, and poster presenter has got some insight from the questions, and the person asking question has also got some new insight.

Maybe discussion was so interesting that they exchange business cards, or connect on LinkedIn. That is a step in your network building. Those connections are more relevant than connect requests on LinkedIn by social media passing strangers. The relevant connections will last over longer time, and at some point in the future may be an opportunity. Maybe job position, invited to consortium, etc.

Sometimes people stop for a while and then move on. It may be so that nobody asks a question. So your work from last year or so, and all preparation for poster, travel etc is not disseminated more than as a title in the conference booklet. Then you can be active. Ask those who stop: should I present the work for you so you get the overview? Most accept. Then present the findings and work, but do not get into all details. The update should not take too long time. If they actually are not so interested, you have wasted several minutes on explaining things. Maybe an interested person who actually may have a question walked by but saw you were busy and moved to another poster. But those who start asking questions after your overview, those are also the useful ones.

Over time, it is your network that will facilitate progress of career.

By Mikael Syväjärvi