Like falling in love, the SFN experience is something that remains inexplicable until you experience it yourself. Fortunately, that hasn't dissuaded LabKitty from explaining stuff before. Join me now for an insider's look at SFN, focusing on helpful tips for graduate students and others attending the conference for the first time. Sure, the Society sends you a booklet and handy email reminders, and your advisor may have one or two things to say, but LabKitty dishes the dirt. What to expect, what to see, what to avoid. Missed flights. Conference food court poisoning. Fistfights with hobos in the parking lot. Provocatively-dressed women offering to demonstrate "a little patch clamping" for $200 back at the hotel.
Learn from LabKitty's mistakes.
Learn.
First, some assumptions. Two, really. I assume (1) you are going to SFN to present something and (2) you are hoping to get at least some of your expenses covered. My advisor's rule was: if you didn't present, you paid your own way. If you're paying your own way for whatever reason (being independently wealthy, for example), you can skip over the parts below about reimbursement subterfuge (Footnote: if you are independently wealthy and are looking to hire a snarky sidekick, one is available at labkittydesign at gmail dot com.)
The something you're going to present is most likely a poster, although you can also sign on to give a brief slide presentation. Conventional wisdom is that a poster is generally preferred as it allows more one-on-one interaction. Find a nice collection of tips for good poster design in a previous post. If you are giving a slide presentation, LabKitty's Tips for Giving a Good Talk apply, albeit in a more compressed time frame. 'Nuff said.
Logic dictates that before you can be at the conference, you must first get to the conference. So our story begins there.
Getting to the Conference
Your journey to SFN doesn't begin at the airport. It doesn't even begin deciding what to present or pack.
Your journey begins at the university Purchasing Department.
If academic life were a movie, probably a made-for-TV movie, you would simply saunter over to Purchasing and quip something like Hey, babe. Be a peach and reimburse me for my conference flight? Atta boy. You head back to the lab to continue curing disease and whatnot. The next day a workstudy drops a check in your mailbox. Alas, no. Not long ago someone decided the castor bean counters should have literal power of attorney over everything the rest of us do. University faculty are all devious little imps who must be watched constantly lest they use grant money to get their lawn resodded or go antiquing. Before one cent is released for your trip you must prove yourself in single combat.
Presently, this takes the form of Greek tragedy starring you and someone having a job title like Flight Selection Complexification Specialist who's been extra bitter ever since the university upgraded their Purchase Bot 3000 software and didn't provide any training over a weekend at Vail. They don't understand the new system, they're looking for someone to take it out on, and here you are.
Fast forward three days and Purchasing has found you a seat on a Sopwith Camel connecting in Moose Jaw for $1300. Pointing out Travelocity is offering a direct flight for $129 is to no avail. The guidelines have come down the mountain, and unless universities purchase their purchases using the official purchasing software the schaden will freude or the alignment sphere will go kablooie or something.
It is at this juncture you might consider trading permission for forgiveness, purchasing your ticket like a normal person then turning in the receipt upon your return wearing sad puppy eyes or a dynamite vest in an attempt to cajole reimbursement post hoc. Alas, Purchasing has grown wise to such subterfuge. The first year I asked whether I could just buy the cheaper flight out-of-pocket, they said yes. The next year: yes, but you won't get reimbursed. The year after that: yes, but you won't get reimbursed and you won't be allowed on the flight. The humiliation of being frog-marched through the airport by campus police is too dreadful to contemplate.
The Matrix has you, indeed.
Your "Hotel"
Accommodations can easily be the most expensive budget item of your trip. You can always save on food and entertainment by not participating in them while at the conference, and air travel remains relatively cheap -- the efforts of Purchasing notwithstanding -- as long as regular invasions of oil-rich nations keep the cost of Jet-A down. Hotels are a different story. Even a reasonable daily rate adds up when you're staying for a week. The Society does its best here to help, setting aside a selection of less-expensive hotels for use by students. However, cheap space is limited and competition is fierce. A common trick is to surreptitiously crash with someone who scored a hotel room and slip them your share of the rent in cash. Be aware hotel dicks keep an eye out for this sort of thing during SFN, as nerds are notorious for abusing the practice in the extreme.
If you're an antisocial wolverine who can't cotton the thought of roommates (bless your black little heart) you may find yourself in a pickle if the cheap rooms are full up. Going out-of-system for a hotel is a bad idea for a number of reasons. The conference organizers have the lay of the land, and know how to keep the nerd herds out of the seedier parts of town. Carrying a tote bag proudly festooned with SOCIETY FOR NEUROSCIENCE through a bad neighborhood clearly identifies you as someone with a wallet and poor survival skills. In any event, the Society's block-purchasing power generally makes it tough to beat their rates. It is here you may be tempted to, or your advisor may suggest that you, entertain more colorful accommodation options. Resist this at all costs. There's a reason the movie Hostel was called Hostel and not Embassy Suites. And staying at the YMCA is not really as much fun as the Village People would have you believe, at least not in any town SFN lands in.
That being said, in all my years of going to the conference as a lowly graduate student (and, I might add, antisocial wolverine), housing somehow always worked out. Perhaps it was just luck. But I suspect the real reason is that the SFN organizers work very hard to make sure everyone can be accommodated. Kudos, SFN organizers. The worst disappointment I ever experienced was a hotel directly under the final approach for Dulles. I asked the concierge if I could go up on the roof and watch the planes land. He said the TSA snipers would shoot me.
At the Airport
The powerful Inkjet Lobby has decreed conference posters must be printed whole and so rolled into a protective cardboard tube for transport. Unfortunately, the tube is roughly the same dimensions as an assault rifle, which tends to put airport security off their feed. Act accordingly. I could hide enough C4 in this baby to level Disneyland is not the sort of humor you should employ while on line. Be polite. Be patient. I've humped many a-poster through airports over the years and have yet to experience any drama that wasn't my fault. For all of the bad-mouthing the TSA gets, if you had to deal with the bozos who fly coach on a daily basis you'd be reaching for the anal prober too.
Yes, it goes without saying: never never never check your poster. Ignore this advice and I guarantee some day you will be explaining your cutting edge research at SFN using a combination of poorly sketched cocktail napkins and shadow puppets. Most people have figured this out, but I would be remiss to not state it explicitly. Can't say you haven't been warned.
Your poster tube marks you as a conferenceteer while en route, not unlike Hester Prynne. Ordinary folks may take this as a cue to strike up a conversation, for they are a naturally curious people. Here you are an Ambassador of Science, no less than Bill Nye or Neil deGrass Tyson. This is your opportunity to generate some public goodwill. Remember: many muggles would see the NIH shuttered if the tax refund put so much as a dollar in their pocket. I don't care if you just jetted in from Stockholm to accept your Nobel, when a little kid with a juice box and an Elmo wants to know what's in the tube, you put down the article you are reading and explain to them what's in the tube.
The grown-ups, of course, need a middle ground. Do: connect your work to a clinical application, somehow. Don't: jargon. Citizens can grok you getting $2.5 million of their money to improve brain tumor detection. They can't grok you getting $2.5 million to investigate whether Daubechies wavelets are NP complete. If you can, mention the funding challenges university research currently faces facing a Congress run by rabid ferrets (probably don't say it like that). Bonus tip: it's best to be vague when discussing wet work. "I just do computer models" is a handy way to steer the conversation if one of your row mates starts giving off Sarah McLaughlin vibes, even if you were indeed rongeuring a hot bunny head over Pop Tarts that very morning. The truth may set you free, but deception keeps the peace. The last thing you want is to light up a PETA member at 37,000 feet.
Getting to the Hotel
Touch down in the land of the delta blues. By which I think they mean San Diego.
There's not much to say here. If you can navigate getting into graduate school, you can probably navigate getting from LAX to the Radisson. One or two things, however.
First, it costs more than you expect. Some of the fancy hotels have their own free shuttles; yours prolly nope. If the trip requires an honest-to-gosh taxi (not all destinations have SuperShuttle) this can be a whopping expense you forgot to factor in when selecting a place to stay. Not much you can do about it now. Pro-tip: pay in cash and bring correct change. Get a receipt if you're looking to get reimbursed. Also, give a good tip (cf. "Science Ambassador," above). As nerd density increases substantially in this leg of the journey, be sure you exit any shared vehicle with the correct poster, assuming you were not clutching yours white-knuckled all the way into town.
Keep an eye out for brothers or sisters foundering in the ground transportation undertow. Foreign guests especially, who may be testing their ESL on native speakers for the first time and experiencing what is a rather sudden phase transition peculiar to air travel. Remember, they boarded in entirely familiar surrounds and got off a stranger in a strange land. Having once been on the receiving end of that culture shock, I was grateful for the assistance volunteered by one of the locals, patiently explaining the bizarre language, money, and customs of Heathrow.
Sharing an airport shuttle gives you your first glimpse of the SFN caste system. Tenured faculty get dropped at top-shelf destinations where they are greeted with a mai tai and complimentary puppy before being whisked off to jeweled accommodations trailing an entourage of fawning curb staff. Don't get your hopes up. Your budget accommodations will be much more, how shall we say, rustic. The only thing that's going to be greeting you is the sound of gunfire off in the distance. Cars on cinder blocks, check cashing joints, emaciated dogs stumbling across the parking lot looking for a place to die.
Oh, I'm just funnin' ya. The cheap SFN accommodations are fine, they're just further away. Sometimes this means a long walk to the conference hall; other times a bus or van is provided. As long as you're not constantly needing to rush back to the room for your inhaler or to suppress a panic attack, it's not as inconvenient as it sounds.
You are Here
Once you check in, head up to the room, drop the dead bolt, and take some time to decompress. Stow your gear, bounce on the bed, find the vending machines. Enjoy the view if you have one. Check for any tell-tale bindles on the fire escape that indicate hobos are in residence. If you are suffering roomies, map out bathroom schedules and decide who gets what part of the bed. Practice your agreed-upon story about occupancy in case the hotel dick drops by for a head count.
All set? Good, for there is work to do. Plans to be planned. Arrangements to be arranged. Many of these preparations, like making your poster, you would have prepared before arriving. But I've saved discussing them for Part II because it better fit the story, even if the resulting narrative is a bit nonlinear (think of LabKitty as Syd Field updated for the Tarantino generation).
SFN is now in sight, looming on the horizon like Sauron's eye, and unless you want to get jumped by a weird little dude in a loincloth by the end (meh, it could happen), you'd best be ready as you can be when the curtain goes up.
For your conference is a big conference, and you will walk through the front door.
Read Part II of LabKitty's Guide to SFN
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