How Important are Scientific Conferences?

Conference season is in full swing and many of our poster tubes have logged more mileage than Mark Hamill got from Star Wars.  Coming off of the recent American Chemical Society (ACS) and American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) meetings, there is little rest before the summer Gordon conference schedule begins.  Although a scientific conference rarely lasts for more than a week, we often prepare for months on end – performing last-minute experiments, designing beautiful posters and battling large-format printers.  So how many times a year should we be putting ourselves through this wringer?

Scientific conferences often act as a welcomed source of motivation for those of us at the bench.  Weeks, months or even years of banging our heads against a project can leave us wondering whether any projects ever actually work.  However, sitting through talks at a conference proves that there is, in fact, hope.  Beyond hearing inspiring stories, we see how others solved problems similar to ours, which may help move us past the roadblock in our own research.

There’s also a tremendous opportunity to run elbows with some of the scientists whose work you have admired over the years.  Those contacts may result in a new collaboration or even lead to a future postdoc opportunity.  Plus, it’s always amusing to put the names you’ve read on papers for years with actual faces at scientific conferences – who knew the giant in your field is actually only five feet tall…

While scientific conferences provide benefits, it’s not clear how many we actually should attend every year.  For students and postdocs, the answer is often directly related to the lab budget and the PI’s discretion.  Realizing that attending conferences require hard work but may yield great rewards, how often do you think we should be packing up the old poster tube?

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