Question on Conventions

[neuronerd7]

Maybe this doesn't fit here, but after lurking for a while I found this come up a lot in this section.

 

Excuse my ignorance; I just finished my first undergrad semester and I'm quite uneducated on these things. I was reading about people putting conventions on their applications and wondered what that consisted of. A seminar-type thing where you learn or learn about certain skills? Presenting your own research? Sometimes both?

 

Thanks in advance. Just trying to learn now so I'm not panicking my junior and senior years.

[Guest |||]

Typically conventions are conferences, where undergrads/grads/profs/etc come together in some city under the guise of discussing their current research and experiments, but really just enjoy a trip to some foreign city.

 

 

 

Well, okay more the former less the latter.

[TakeruK]

Terminology might vary between fields, but here are some examples:

 

"Winter/Summer School": Generally a small meeting targeted at "early career" (grad students, postdocs, profs looking to branch out into a new expertise). People get together at some place and they spend a few days, or a week, or even several weeks in tutorial/workshop type sessions learning a particular skill, or learning to work with a particular dataset. Example: http://astrostatistics.psu.edu/su13/. These types of meetings are sometimes combined with research presentations to break it up and so that participants can learn what others are working on. These types of meetings also tend to be very focussed workshops so there may be homework to do in the evenings and/or weekends. Sometimes you have to apply for these schools and spots might be competitive.

 

"Conference": Generally a large and regularly occurring meeting. Also generally hosted by national organizations for that particular field. For example, here is a really large meeting that happens in San Francisco every year: http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2013/ and here is a smaller meeting that happens in a different city every year: http://aas.org/meetings/45th-meeting-division-planetary-sciences. These meetings are attended by everyone who is interested and at all stages of career, although you will often see many post-docs, and grad students about to graduate networking here to try to find their next job. The main goal of these meetings is to let other people know about your work and to learn what others are doing. Usually, there are oral presentations in the morning and afternoon and then poster presentations in the late afternoon or evening. Since this event is usually a way to get a large number of people in the field together, sometimes side-meetings occur at the same time as the annual society meeting. If the meeting is run by a society, their member annual meeting (where they elect officers etc.) will generally happen in one of the evenings. The normal way these conferences work is that you submit abstracts a few months ahead of time and the conference organizing committee schedules presentations as oral or poster. Oral presentations take up more time so they are usually harder to get and usually considered more prestigious. However, usually as long as you pay to register, you will be able to attend and at most conferences, if you have legitimate research, you will at least get to present a poster. Some societies that host meetings may have a policy that every member is allowed to present at least one thing per year guaranteed. There isn't usually evening "homework" and in fact many people will take advantage of evenings to socialize with friends from other places that they might only see at these conferences! Sometimes there are organized social events as well. 

 

"Symposium": Sometimes this is just another name for one of the above, but sometimes this just means a very focused and specialized conference. In my field, this generally means a meeting of a few hundred people (where a general meeting/conference could have thousands or tens of thousands of participants) and the focus is on a very limited scope (where a conference would cover almost everything relevant to the field/sub-field). Symposia (or whatever your field might call these types of meetings) might not happen every year. For example: http://dunlap.utoronto.ca/observational-research/iaus-299/

 

In the sciences, students who are presenting research can usually successfully ask their supervisors to pay for the costs of travel, accommodations, registration etc. Depending on how your lab/group works, you might be expected to submit abstracts to conferences as appropriate, or sometimes your PI will direct you to go to certain conferences, or sometimes you have to be proactive and find out interesting meetings and ask your PI to send you. Also, sometimes people pay out of pocket, especially if they are an undergrad and not presenting research, because in some cases, it's worth the investment. But a lot of meetings might have grants you can apply for, and your own department or student groups might have travel awards too.

 

Finally, as "NicholasCage" mentions, many scientists also take advantage of the conference as a way to get to visit an interesting city. I think it's definitely a "perk" of this career, and if you can combine both travelling and learning/presenting science in one trip, then why not? Generally, grad students can probably go to at least one or two meetings per year, depending on the funding available in their group. International meetings might also be really fun if you can justify it! And conference organizers often purposely plan meetings in fun places once in a while (as I said, it's "perk"). In 2011, the American Division for Planetary Sciences decided to have their annual meeting in France, (jointly hosted with their European counterparts). This happens once in awhile. I took advantage of this opportunity to get a paid trip to France. Many others had the same idea and it's not uncommon for people to arrive a week early (or stay an extra few days/week) to be a tourist in whatever place they're visiting