Five tips for making the most of conferences

Hi again,

Whilst at ICME3, I thought that it would be good to share with you some tips about attending a conference.

1) Before you go think about what you want to get out of the conference?

It is easy to register to attend a conference, however, it is more difficult to think specifically about why it is necessary or relevant for you to be there. Yes, it is nice to be immersed within your field of study for a prolonged period of time and it is also lovely to visit another city, however you can be more specific about what you want to get out of a conference.

Try writing a brief list of aims - for example, identifying which researcher/academics you would like to talk to, identify which methodologies you want to learn more about or which of your research ideas do you want this conference to inform.

2) Networking

It is the buzzword within the academic community at the moment, however, for some, myself included it is sometimes difficult to actually network in reality.  Have a look at the advice from Vitae which may help you: http://www.vitae.ac.uk/researchers/1237/Networking-.html  I think that being friendly, interested in the other person's research and keeping a certain question to ask the person in mind when initiating a conversation will help. Also, try to keep in contact after the conference by following fellow delegates on Twitter, Facebook or Academia.edu.

3) Be sociable!

Related to networking is being sociable.  At conferences it is easy to fall into the trap of isolating yourself from the rest of the people at the conference.  You often do this by identifying either from noticing that a number of people are from the same university/department and then formulating cliques in your mind! But, remember that although delegates may be affiliated to the same university/department they may not know each other - some could be completing PhDs from distance or work in a completely different campus - so try to be proactive and initiate conversations with others.  Conferences are all about sharing ideas, practice and learning from each other.

4) Help yourself!

Prepare photocopies of your poster, abstracts and papers presented at previous conferences for people to take away.  This will make it easy for other people to read about you and your research at their leisure.  For example, a poster is often displayed for a day at a conference but it is likely that you will not be at your poster for the whole day. Leaving photocopies and print-outs near to your poster will make it easy for your work to be disseminated concisely and quickly to those who are interested in it.

5) Reflection

At conferences you are bombarded with lots of information - the conference programme, abstract booklet, proceedings, flyers about new books, future conference etc.  It is impossible to read and digest this information during the conference, so when you return dedicate a morning or afternoon to re-reading your notes and the information provided to you during the conference. This will help you to determine which talks and papers are useful to your own research.

Are these tips helpful? Let me know what you think...

All the best,

Steph

Back from ICME3!

Hi Everyone,

I'm back from ICME3 in Jyväskylä, Finland ! 

Below are a few photos of me in action - presenting and with my poster! 

If you haven't already, you can download my paper from the conference proceedings: 

https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/41627

The highlight of the conference for me, was without doubt, the keynote speech given by Professor Daniel Västfjäll http://www.decisionresearch.org/people/vastfjall/.  

He spoke about a concept called Emoacoustics is a research program which aims to determine the emotions aroused by music and sound/acoustics.  I am glad that Daniel is researching sounds and acoustics as within my own research I am investigated the role of sound effects in gambling environments.  Sounds and music are experienced in a wide range of everyday situations and as Daniel articulated within his talk sound-induced emotions can inform our decision-making and judgments.  

Moreover, I was really excited to learn about Daniel's recent experiment which has manipulated the underlying mechanisms as proposed in this article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18826699 to determine how and why we have emotional responses to music.    I think we had a sneak-preview of this research at the conference so am really looking forward to reading the journal article when it is published! 

I have returned from ICME3 with lots of ideas to consider for future research and will be hard at work to prepare for the 13th International Conference of Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC) which will be held in South Korea next year.

Bye for now,

Steph