Conference season - better the devil you know...

This week I've planned something a bit different since I've just come back from the PEB conference and have realised that along with PopGroup51 and Evolution2018 it topped off the trifecta of evolutionary biology conferences I have attended this year. Each of these conferences had their own specific character, quirks and atmosphere and I thought it might be interesting to people looking for conferences to attend to have an overview of the pros and cons of each. Many PhD students are also limited to 1 or 2 conferences per year and I hope this post may give you some points to consider before clicking 'send' on that abstract you've agonised over for days or weeks.

What do you want to get out of a conference?
I think conferences are such an investment in time and energy (and your boss/group/taxpayer money) that its worth doing a bit of soul searching before applying to one. Think hard about what you want to get out of it. If you have just started your project maybe you want to bounce project ideas off people in a similar field before dropping your whole project budget on the wrong type of DNA sequencing/equipment. If you are about to hand in maybe your time is better spent networking and meeting the BIG PIs whose papers you have been reading for 3 years (and begging them for a job). I would say that unless you're giving a talk or presenting a poster at a conference there isn't much point in going. Although it may seem like you'll have more time to interact with people if you don't present anything I think it limits who will talk to you and make the conversations you do have weirdly one sided.

Speak to your boss about what they go to conferences for and it is likely that their answer will be different to yours. From my experience established group leaders/PIs tend to go to conferences to get an overview of cool work being done (often in related fields or broader topics to those that they work on) and meet and catch up with their friends/colleagues from previous groups/collaborations. For this reason they might only attend large meetings e.g. ESEB and Evolution meetings for evolutionary biologist and will tend to avoid smaller meetings where specific techniques/study systems are being discussed.

I'll now briefly describe each of the three conferences I have attended this year and why they may or may not be the type of conference for you.

1. 4th PEB conference - Buttermere

Number of attendees: ~30
Proportion of attendees you interact with: 100%
They describe the conference as:

The Programming for Evolutionary Biology (PEB) conference brings together scientists broadly interested in applying bioinformatic tools to answer evolutionary and ecological questions. Unlike other conferences featuring mostly talks and poster sessions, it aims to serve as a platform for discussing common programming pitfalls encountered during research and features workshops to further develop participants’ bioinformatic skills.

PEB was the smallest of the three conferences and took place at a youth hostel in the Lake District. This small venue meant that you live with the participants for the duration of the conference and ultimately meant you get to speak to everyone. The conference was split up with mornings of talks and afternoons of workshops and discussion groups covering topics like GIS, genome assembly and cloud computing. I loved the fact that everyone got to speak to everyone and this meant that by the end of the course people were discussing specific problems they were having e.g. running certain analyses with specific attendees who worked in those areas. It was a great opportunity to get a more informal (and possibly more realistic) overview of techniques which you are thinking about using. I gave a talk at the meeting and was able to discuss my work in more detail with people after including those who wanted to do something similar. Verdict: I would go to similar conferences/workshops to learn specific things - in this case variant calling, genome assembly techniques and cloud computing were things that interested me. In my opinion the overall topic, invited speakers and workshops and their relevance to your work should be key in deciding to go to a small conference.

Pros:

• you can easily talk to everyone
• it's easy to discuss techniques people have used/ask for help
• small meetings are usually more laid back meaning it's easier to ask people questions and the whole schedule is usually a bit less fixed
• you can hear about people's new work - people are more likely to present results they just generated so you're not hearing about something you already read in a paper

Cons:

• conferences of this size can sometimes mean few people are really interested in your work 
• sometimes many participants are from one group (the organisers') so small conferences are maybe not the best for networking broadly
• small conferences and workshops sometimes struggle to get mega-famous people (this is not really a con in my opinion but could put people off)

2. PopGroup51 - Bristol

Number of attendees: ~200
Proportion of attendees you interact with: 50-80%
My description of the conference:

PopGroup (Population Genetics Group) is a relatively broad meeting with predominantly attendees from British groups who study population genetics and related subjects. 

PopGroup51 was the intermediate conference and was held in January at Bristol Uni. Although people stay in different places the meeting was large enough to bump into people even outside of the venue and people socialised over dinner and drinks after the talks finished each day. PopGroup comprised of mostly talks but also had two poster sessions giving you a reasonable amount of time if, like me, you were presenting a poster. The conference has a topic but people presented all sorts of related work which was really interesting and made the busy 2/3 days much more bearable! I really liked that people there knew each other and it made me feel included after knowing only a couple of people there. Verdict: I want PopGroup to be my annual conference. It was the perfect size for me and allowed me to meet everyone and discuss my project with everyone who was interested. Next year I'll probably apply for a talk and hope it lives up to the Bristol meeting. I think conferences of this size are least likely to be a waste of time and energy - go for it!

Pros:

• at meetings of this size you can almost talk to everyone
• it's really easy to approach people since you're likely connected by someone at the conference
• if you are junior you're more likely to get a talk than huge meetings (I still presented a poster at PopGroup51)
• 2/3 days is the ideal time to stay engaged with the talks through the whole conference

Cons:

• intermediate conferences usually last only 2/3 days so if it is far to travel it might not feel like it's worth it
• predominantly British groups go to PopGroup (I don't see this as a con but if you want to meet someone who doesn't work in the country these 'intermediate' conferences are held in you might be out of luck)

3. Evolution2018 - Montpellier

Number of attendees: ~3000
Proportion of attendees you interact with: 1%
They describe the conference as:

ESEB is delighted to welcome you to the Second Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology. Joint Congresses take place every six years and bring together four of the world's largest academic societies in the field of evolutionary biology: the European Society for Evolutionary Biology, the American Society of Naturalists, the Society for the Study of Evolution and the Society of Systematic Biologists. 

Evolution was crazy. The conference took place at a big exhibition centre called Le Corum in the middle of Montpellier. The venue alone was so big it was easy to not bump into anyone you know for the whole day. I stayed with people from my group in an AirBnB but we spent the majority of the week in Le Corum and in restaurants talking to people about science. The days were filled with talks and in the evenings I went out with different groups usually formed spontaneously after the last session of the day. It was great that the meeting was so big and you could see talks on any aspect of evolutionary biology but I found it very draining. I also liked the ability to network with many people whose papers I had read but again this takes its toll after a week! I presented a poster but since the poster sessions were quite short and there were around 1000 posters I felt like Evolution was really geared towards hearing as many talks possible. Verdict: I would to go a massive meeting again but will re-read this post to remind myself how tiring it is! It's a great chance to network with specific people but don't expect loads of people come to your poster and be enthused. It was tiring but definitely worth going for the experience (start mentally preparing now for the next joint meeting!).

Pros:

• you get to listen to (and meet if you're brave enough) the biggest names in your field
• you can attend talks on every subject (even some you've never heard of)
• large meetings are diverse and have people from many countries/groups
• meetings of this size often have a packed schedule because of the interest and so over the course of the conference you can easy to listen to many talks

Cons:

• perhaps surprisingly it can be hard to meet specific people (especially big names since they often have scheduled meetings with other people and like you they want to catch up with their friends/collaborators too)
• even if you meet the big name you don't always have time to discuss the minutiae of specific techniques since everyone at these meetings is somewhere between frantic and exhausted
• large conferences have exhausting timetables/many parallel sessions (in the case of Evolution2018 it was 14 parallel sessions sometimes)

For another overview of conferences both from the student and prof perspective check out THIS post from the Eco-Evo Evo-Eco blog. See you next week for PhDetails #24!