Hot take - people underrate the importance of conferences as tools of acquiring information. Sure, you could "read the papers or let an AI summarize them for you" but 1. The result is often much more shallow than whaf you get from a talk, even a from a 5 min blitz. 5 mins of undivided attention are a precious commodity these days, that one usually can't afford 2. Even if you could do it, you often only read papers thar are related to your interests, but conferences are a great way to break out of your reading comfort zone. C. Obviously only in conferences you can ask people why they did certain things and not others.
Personally, I find almost all my best ideas came from conferences, either directly from a talk or talking to the people later. Not small talk - I am terrible at those - but the mutual nerd out over a specific paper, method or talk.
So my suggestion - enjoy conferences as the nerd haven that they are. You will probably make some connections too, but nerding out is more fun and not much less effective.
I won't be attending SPSP unfortunately (didn't register they're sticklers for late registration), but if I sneak into the odd talk I hope to see you there!
I’ll be at SPSP for the first time in a long while. Hope to see you there. Also, we just had an area meeting with our grad students to talk about how to make the most of conferences. Glad to see a lot of parallels in the advice we gave them and what you offer here.
This contains a lot of great insights about conferences.
It has also made me realise that consortium projects are like a continous ongoing conference where you get to act on the ideas that emerge out of interactions.
Hot take - people underrate the importance of conferences as tools of acquiring information. Sure, you could "read the papers or let an AI summarize them for you" but 1. The result is often much more shallow than whaf you get from a talk, even a from a 5 min blitz. 5 mins of undivided attention are a precious commodity these days, that one usually can't afford 2. Even if you could do it, you often only read papers thar are related to your interests, but conferences are a great way to break out of your reading comfort zone. C. Obviously only in conferences you can ask people why they did certain things and not others.
Personally, I find almost all my best ideas came from conferences, either directly from a talk or talking to the people later. Not small talk - I am terrible at those - but the mutual nerd out over a specific paper, method or talk.
So my suggestion - enjoy conferences as the nerd haven that they are. You will probably make some connections too, but nerding out is more fun and not much less effective.
I won't be attending SPSP unfortunately (didn't register they're sticklers for late registration), but if I sneak into the odd talk I hope to see you there!
I’ll be at SPSP for the first time in a long while. Hope to see you there. Also, we just had an area meeting with our grad students to talk about how to make the most of conferences. Glad to see a lot of parallels in the advice we gave them and what you offer here.
See you in Chicago!
This contains a lot of great insights about conferences.
It has also made me realise that consortium projects are like a continous ongoing conference where you get to act on the ideas that emerge out of interactions.
I love this!!!