How to attend a research conference

Prepare a 30 second ‘elevator pitch’ that describes your work
If attending a multi-track conference, plan out your schedule
If necessary, make business cards
If you’re giving a talk ** Practice, practice, practice ** Prepare a short bio that the session chair can read out ** Confirm the duration of the talk ** Plan out which slides you can skip in case you’re rushed for time

Introduce yourself; mingle; building ‘social capital’
Ask others about their work. You can go up to almost anyone and ask “What are you working on these days?”
Solicit pointers to related work
Before going to bed each night, write down what you learned that day
Avoid meeting with anyone from your own university!
If you doing a presentation ** Approach your session chair as soon as you can to let them know your presence ** Make sure you can attach to the projector, that the colours come out right, and that your text is visible at the back of the room ** In your presentation, try to refer to other talks from the session ** Carry both a PDF and a Powerpoint/Keynote version of your slides, in case the session chair’s laptop cannot accept the native format

Ask pertinent questions, not to score points, but to challenge incorrect assumptions and to point the speaker to related work
Think about the presentations you attend ** What would you have done differently? ** How can you incorporate the work and the presentation style into your own work?

Thanks to Tim Brecht and Hanan Shpungin for their ideas, which I have incorporated into this page