Scientific conferences: the way to get professional experience

Love them or hate them, conferences are an inescapable part of the rich tapestry of scientific life. They can be career- and motivation-enhancing experiences, leaving you buzzing with new ideas, contacts, and collaborations. Alternatively they can be dull as ditchwater, leaving you with the sinking feeling that you've just paid over a lot of money for the privilege of napping the week away in a velvet-upholstered hellhole. Needless to say that conferences are professionally important. They allow researchers to meet in friendly and relaxed atmosphere, to discuss latest developments in areas of their particular interest, to exchange the views and ideas and find potential partners for future collaboration and common projects.

Potential participants receive announcements or circulars with the information on registration, program, short courses, expositions, housing (hotel or dorm selection, check-in and check-out date, room type, type of payment), transportation, tours, cultural and sports facilities, etc. They are asked to send back a conference registration form with the indication of a participant's last and first name, organization name, name of academic institution or affiliation, address, telephone number, email, registration fee, selected area of scientific interest, type and name of the presentation (lecture, communication, or poster).

The aim of the conference is to help find new ways of treating various issues using recent scientific advances and also to pave the way for future cooperation in research on these issues at local, regional or international levels.

The conference is based around several research themes. The best way to do at the conference is to participate in all discussions. Your goal at the conference is to contribute to the development of scientific advances for research, make proposals on improving the organisation of research, etc. All conferees should strictly follow instructions and deadline to submit either hardcopy or electron versions of their abstracts. Time needed for the presentation should also be indicated.

Conferences also provide an efficient means for establishing a personal network of individuals who can be helpful professionally: people who know how to do things to mutual interest, who have experiences which may be related to current areas of concern, or who have useful information. At conferences you can observes intellectual creativity in action, the formation of the nascent ideas that may not appear in written form for several years. Conferences may be intellectually much more stimulating than the formal papers.

Even listening to a discussion of a familiar subject can be educational. When the subject is familiar, the listener can concentrate on the development of the material and observe the interaction of ideas without the usual concern about understanding the content. At this level of thought it is often possible to separate local problems, from those, which are more general in nature.

Participants of well-run conferences frequently come away with the feeling of enthusiasm and intellectual stimulation that inspires their work of researchers for several years.