Professional Conference Budgeting

[Neist]

The program I'm attending in the fall offers limited funding for traveling expenses, but usually only if one is presenting. I have no issue with such concessions. However, there are additional conferences that I have considered attending for professional growth and networking opportunities. 

Question: To those who are already in graduate programs, if a conference might reasonably improve one's professional network or skillset, would you or have you taken out small, yearly student loans to finance going?

I'm considering it. I cannot make the money magically appear via my stipend. I'm going to be supporting a family of three on it exclusively, and while adequate, I can't imagine digging an extra thousand a year out of it. Even so, I'd rather hear some first-hand accounts of those who are already in graduate programs.

 

[TakeruK]

When I was starting as a grad student, I talked to many other people about this, at all levels (grads, postdocs, faculty). At first, I only talked to people in my field and the advice I got was never ever pay out of pocket to attend. Even professional growth and networking is your department's responsibility. But then I talked to more people in other field (some on this forum, some from cross-campus organizations) and learned that this is not the norm in other places. For some people, they have to pay out of pocket even when they are presenting. (Or, if you don't have good credit / big enough bank account balance, since everything is reimbursement-based, you might have to pay for registration and flights up front and not get the money back for months, incurring interest charges etc that won't be reimbursed!)

Then, I talked to even more people in my field and learned that I was wrong to think it's so simply field divided. There are certainly many postdocs or adjuncts in my field at places with little funding where taking time to do professional development counts against vacation days and has very limited funding to present at conferences (certainly far fewer conferences than some of the people they need to compete with for tenure tracked jobs!) I also know grad students, postdocs and even professors that incur personal costs for things like childcare when they need to attend conferences.

At my school, our department offers a first year travel award that specifically does not require you to present at a conference, i.e. it's for networking and professional growth only. This is because we aren't exactly "tied" to an advisor yet in Year 1 and we may not have enough work done in the first year to present (the big field specific meeting is in December, and abstract deadlines would have been back in the summer, before we even got to grad school). Beyond the first year, our advisors are expected to pay for us to attend workshops and other professional development opportunities where we don't present. Beyond first year though, we would be expected to present at the conferences because in our field, the bar is pretty low to present a poster at a conference---many grad students present work in progress or just an update. 

All of that said, I think some people overstate the value of networking at conferences. Don't get me wrong---networking is very important and conferences are one of the best places to do this. However, the quality of the networking really matters. Some people seem to give advice that sounds like if you just show up to a conference, then you'll magically gain all of this networking goodness and everything will be great. But honestly, I think it's very easy to pay a lot of your own money to go to a conference and not really get a lot out of it. So, especially for a new grad student, I would probably not advise paying out of pocket for a conference. I think that if you do have to spend your own money (ideally you won't but I realise we don't live in an ideal world!), I would save it for later in your career where you know you will get more value out of it. 

But, I also don't want to tell you how to spend (or not spend) your money, so instead, I'll say some points to keep in mind when deciding if a conference is worth going to for networking reasons (whether it's your personal money or your advisor's money because even if it's not your own, there is still a budget so you would still have to decide which ones to ask your advisor to pay for):

- Keep an eye/ear open to all opportunities. Sometimes a flashy big conference might be in a faraway city but another decent sized conferenece might be nearby and the latter might give you more value for cost.

- Sometimes conferences have their own travel grant system, especially if they are run by your field's national society.

- Join your field national society for travel grant opportunities! (I just received a travel award for a flight to Europe for a conference this summer!). The annual fees are something like $100 (and you usually get the first 2 years for the price of 1 if you are a new student). They also provide discounted registration rate for members (discounts often more than the membership fee). Also, some advisors are willing to pay for your society membership fees (I am part of 2 major societies and my advisor is willing to pay for one of them).

- Talk to your faculty members and senior students about conference reputations. Some conferences are much better for networking than others! Some meetings, especially the really big ones, are very "clique-y" and basically if you are a new person that doesn't know anyone, you'll find yourself just attending talks and not really networking. Everyone would already have lunch plans or dinner plans or already chatting during the coffee breaks. The best way to "break in" to these groups is to have a senior student help introduce you to a few people etc. (I do this for new students now as others have helped me out in the past!)

- Decide on your networking goal: Do you want to establish yourself as a member of a specific subfield? In my field, the best way to do this is to present and attend a small meeting, where small is 200-400 people. Or, do you want to just expose yourself to the variety of your field? Then attend your field's big annual meeting (my field, this is 2000-3000 people). For a new student, a big meeting like this isn't really going to help you get noticed by other people, especially if you are not presenting, but it will help you notice what's going on in the field.

- Really try to present something if you can. Maybe field norms are different, but in mine, poster presentations are basically a ticket to the conference. Talk spots are hard to get, but it's pretty rare to find the few attendees out of the ~2000 people who aren't presenting at least a poster. In my field, the rule of thumb is that as long as the work is so incomplete or poor that it would make you look bad, then you should present it as a poster (unless you think someone could scoop you). And if your work is that incomplete, then I think you might be better off spending time getting work to a presentable level before doing things like networking/professional development.

This became a little more rambling than I wanted, but hope it's still helpful.

[Neist]

Wow, that's actually exceptionally helpful! You answered so comprehensively that I doubt there's a lot of room for improvement by others.

Thanks a bunch.  

[rising_star]

Honestly, I've had better luck networking at small/regional conferences, rather than major national ones. That's because the conferences themselves are smaller, which makes it easier to make connections with people, see interesting talks, bump into people in the hallways, etc. They're a less intense experience in a good way. For me, the upside of those regional conferences is that they're often cheaper to attend because you can drive or take the train, there's often opportunities to crash with a local grad student, etc.

I don't know that I'd take out serious loans to attend a conference, though I do realize how expensive conferences I can be. Some of it is being strategic about what I do and don't attend in any given year, thinking about what I'll get out of it, as well as the travel and expenses involved in attending. I've definitely had to put things on credit cards while waiting for reimbursements though. One thing to think about is whether there are any funds available from your graduate school/college or grad student association to help support conference attendance. I know that we could get ~$500/person each year to help attend conferences that way, which was enough for an entire regional conference if I played my cards right.

[Neist]

2 hours ago, rising_star said:

Honestly, I've had better luck networking at small/regional conferences, rather than major national ones. That's because the conferences themselves are smaller, which makes it easier to make connections with people, see interesting talks, bump into people in the hallways, etc. They're a less intense experience in a good way. For me, the upside of those regional conferences is that they're often cheaper to attend because you can drive or take the train, there's often opportunities to crash with a local grad student, etc.

I don't know that I'd take out serious loans to attend a conference, though I do realize how expensive conferences I can be. Some of it is being strategic about what I do and don't attend in any given year, thinking about what I'll get out of it, as well as the travel and expenses involved in attending. I've definitely had to put things on credit cards while waiting for reimbursements though. One thing to think about is whether there are any funds available from your graduate school/college or grad student association to help support conference attendance. I know that we could get ~$500/person each year to help attend conferences that way, which was enough for an entire regional conference if I played my cards right.

This is a pretty insightful point. and I'll have to consider it in length.

Some professional conferences I could attend (the ALA conference comes to mind) are definitely on the larger side, and while they'd certainly help me stay atop current trends in my discipline, they are probably less useful for networking opportunities. But, at the same time, some of my interests are specific enough that many conferences are relatively small, because my interests are somewhat esoteric. 

Both of your responses have been very helpful.  

 

[TakeruK]

For me, smaller conferences are much better for networking, as I said above. There are two ways a conference can be small---it can be regional or it can be highly subject specific. In my own experience only, I find that networking is much better at a small, subject specific conference than a small broad-topic but region specific conference. That is, in terms of "getting your money's worth", in my field, I think it's better to wait for a subject specific meeting to come to your area than it is to go to the next regional meeting. This is why I think location in terms of "academic centralness" for your field is a factor in making grad school decisions too! But maybe this varies a lot more from field to field.

[GradSchoolTruther]

You're probably going to go to two conferences per year, at most, even after you finish. In some fields, one is the norm. Don't worry about networking at this point. Wait a year or two until you have something solid to present.

[rising_star]

For me, there aren't a lot of subject-specific conferences I could attend and, at least in terms of future jobs, the broader conferences are where I'm more likely to meet/network with future employers because postdocs aren't common in my field. But, I also work in a pretty niche subfield so that may be coloring my perspective. Honestly, you can get info on the current trends by looking at the program and abstracts of the big conference, even if you don't attend. Then, you could email presenters you're interested in about their papers or to start a dialogue with them, even if you aren't able to attend your talk.

[ashiepoo72]

I'd talk to your adviser. I don't have anything to present at my subfield's conference, but my adviser told me I should attend because it's in CA and is "more manageable" than the AHA.

[fuzzylogician]

For me, bigger and smaller conferences achieve different goals. The bigger ones are better for having my ideas heard, and they are an opportunity to catch up with friends and colleagues who I don't get to see very often. The smaller conferences are better for meeting new people and making connections, especially when it comes to people who are specifically in my subfield or work on related issues. That said, the bigger conferences in my field are probably about 2-300 people in size, and smaller ones could be anywhere from 30-50 to maybe 70. So that sounds a bit different from having thousands of people around. We have one such conference a year, and I go there for job interviews and to meet up with friends, but it's not usually a good place to meet new people or to get my research out to the right people, because it's so large it's hard to make sure the right people are in the audience. 

If you are just getting started as a student, I don't think it's worth taking out loans to network. When you have something good to present, maybe in your third year (assuming a 5-year program), that's the time to start thinking about conferences. There are ways of reducing costs, like choosing to attend conferences that are closer by, staying with graduate students, and applying for university-wide travel funding opportunities, which may offset at least some of the costs. Some conferences also offer some funding to students, and that's worth looking into. If I were paying out of pocket (which I've never done), I would not go to more than one conference a year, and I'd be careful about choosing the right one. There are ways to network without traveling, by contacting the relevant people and starting email and then Skype conversations. At some point it may be important to be visible, as you start thinking about the job market, but perhaps not before, if you are funding your own travel throughout. If later in your degree you apply for external funding, make sure you remember to add travel funding to your budget so you get to present your work.