In Part I of LabKitty's Guide to SFN, we traveled from Alma Mater to conference city, battling dragons and trolls along the way. Purchasing. The TSA. Ground transportation. Hotel dicks. We also learned some tricks for good poster design. I prep you for the show. What to expect, what to see. Where to go, who you know. And, of course, your own personal 15 minutes of fame (or four hours of humiliation, depending on the crowd): your poster presentation.
The hall is now rented, the orchestra engaged.
It's time to see if you can dance.<
Planning your Attack
There is literally more at SFN than any one person can see, if for no other reason than much of it happens concurrently. And it's not like the time you passed Western Civ by sneaking a Resusci Anne doll into your assigned seat for the entire semester because the only open ochem lab was scheduled at the same time. There are genuine things of value to be missed. This requires careful planning.<
The Society steps up here, providing detailed skinny of goings-on both large and small. Events you'll want to see fall into two categories: things that happen at a specific time and things that can happen on your time. In the former category are the slide, platform, and keynote talks. The latter is mostly the posters, which go up in four-hour time blocks. More on posters later.
Footnote: The event listings used to come in a couple of great fat books. These went digital a few years back, I presume due to carping of campus mail. Sure, now they're searchable, but the phone books could stop a 9mm round, which is useful when SFN is in New Orleans or DC.
The big events you need to plan for are as follows.
The Keynote
The Keynote Address arrives the first official night of the conference, much in the tradition of the president throwing out the first pitch at the Superbowl. Here is your opportunity to see Dr. Bigshot McNobelPrize talk about the current state of his or her art and the interesting places it may be off to. Or at least see a visage of them up on the jumbotron. For the venue of the keynote is truly enormous, row upon row of seated spectators as far as the eye can see. It's like Lollapalooza without the moshing and sea of raised cell phones.
Footnote: If I'm not mistaken, the keynote is open to the general public. A nice gesture, but I can't for the life of me imagine the conversation that brings a muggle to SFN. Screw the Game of Thrones finale -- Eric Kandel is giving a talk about scaffolding proteins! Good thing there's TIVO, I guess.
The lectures themselves are rather hit-and-miss. I recall a wonderful presentation by Robert Sapolsky some years back that kept the crowd riveted the entire time, perhaps because his observations on rivalries in chimp clans struck a familiar chord. However, I also recall a rather dry outing one year that had people sprinting for the doors every time the speaker turned to point at the data. Still, this is as close to a rock star as many of us will ever get, the rich and famous able to obtain a restraining order these days with what I would term very little cause.
Platform Talks
Just as the royal family is simply the most prominent of the nobility, the keynote is simply the most prominent of the platform talks. Lessor keynotes, as we might call them, run throughout the week. This gives you an opportunity to see Dr. Hopeful McNobelPrize talk about the current state of his or her art and the interesting places it may be off to. Even if you have no interest in the talk, it's an opportunity to sit in a dark room for an hour and recharge. Unlike the keynote, by the time the platforms come around you will be neck deep in conference fu.
>Footnote: The NIH money people usually do a platform, offering a panel discussion with a touchy-feely title like Improving the Payline in the New Millennium but the take-home more like: For a dwindling number of you it's business as usual. I'm not sure what the point is anymore. One year when the Q&A got testy, they turned off the microphones and had security usher everyone out. So there's that. Confidential to whomever is running the NIH who are apparently utterly at a loss for how to increase our federal budget allocation: Um, guys, the Citizen's United ruling stone-cold legalized Congressional bribery and last year you had $30B at your disposal. Do I have to draw you a picture?
Recovering the Satellites
There are various and sundry satellite meetings that meet before the main meeting meets. Very much smaller (say a few hundred attendees) and, often, inconveniently, held at a separate locale like a big hotel out in the suburbs. They're a great place to forge camaraderie in a narrow research area. You can present your talk or poster there in addition to the conference proper. This can be a golden opportunity to get you and your work in front of the best possible crowd. However, attending a satellite adds time and expense to your trip and you're going to be seeing these people under the big top anyway. Also, it's not necessarily a fast track to hang with the big dogs. My experience is that the big dogs will ignore you at a satellite just as much as at the main event. In short: don't attend a satellite just because it looks vaguely relevant to your research; do consider attending if the theme is literally your dissertation topic.
Short Courses
SFN also offers a buffet of short courses on everything from writing a grant to writing your Nobel acceptance speech. They sound like an amazing opportunity to get concentrated learning goodness from some of the top names in the field. Alas, I don't know much more about them. Looking through the course offerings always made me feel like Ralphie looking through the Sears catalogue at Christmas, but any suggestion to attend one always received a chilly reception from my advisor. It may have been the money (they can be pricey) or it may have been seen as some sort of intellectual infidelity, the student-mentor bond threatened like Al Swearengen when the Bella Union set up shop across the way. YMMV.
Arriving at the Conference Hall
Upon arriving at the conference hall, your first job is to "get your ID on" as the kids say but also actually, as you need to have it on lest the beeftots watching the doors deny you entrance. There's big boxes of lanyards as you go in. Get strapped and proceed.
If you need to pick up your ID, or you lost it, or you have any conference-related crisis really, consult one of the conference volunteers. Hard-working, knowledgeable, and friendly to a fault, they are your primary resource for dealing with anything from directions and lost and found to placing a swaddling babe you discovered on your hotel stoop with a loving family (probably). I can only wonder what sin a person could commit in a single lifetime to end up as a volunteer at a nerdfest like SFN. Maybe it's community service; it was either this or picking up trash along the interstate. Keep an eye out for Lindsay Lohan handing out programs when she eventually drives her Porsche into Garrison Keillor's swimming pool.
Once you are lanyarded up, you are good to go. Around the perimeter of the joint are various booths and coat checks. There's a message board of scrolling names with a waiting message, unless that's been eliminated as texting achieves full market penetration amongst academics. There's a half dozen Starbucks kiosks, each with a mile line, and lots of other things I can't remember at the moment. If you need a quiet moment, try the escalators. As a rule, things get less hectic the further up you go, although security will only let you get so far off the beaten path before they start to circle.
And a quiet moment will be a cherished moment indeed. For it is time to enter the sanctum sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, the thalamus one might say, and if you don't understand that joke you need to brush up on your Latin.
Make like a breech baby and head inside. For you have reached your final destination at last.
The Poster Barn: God's Monkey House
Posters are presented in a ginormous airplane hanger having the acoustics of a cement kennel. Row upon row of easels stand ready to proffer the cream of the world's cutting-edge neuroscience research, 4x5 foot slurfs at a time. Depending on when you arrive, these may already be in use, in repeated rotations for the duration, a four-hour session in the morning and another in the afternoon. Rows are organized by theme so attendees having a common research interest may conveniently mingle. The rows start at "A" and go down to something like double zed; the posters are numbered up each row. The official poster position is of the form XXX.YY, where XXX is the theme code and YY is the poster number (there's also a letter/number identifier on the easels, should the Dewey decimal system elude your grasp). You can probably figure all this out, what with having gone to university and whatnot. Let's move on.
Stroll up and down the rows searching for the posters you wish to view based on the list you made from the poster directory (see "Planning your Attack," above), interspersed with occasionally scampering off to take in a slide presentation or platform talk. You may opt to simply window shop. However, standard practice is to allow the poster presenter to present their work in a condensed verbal form -- known as The Spiel -- that helps the current gaggle of visitors rapidly absorb the high points. The standard greeting that activates The Spiel is "can you take me through this?" Ask questions as needed. There is science on display, yes, but this is also a golden opportunity to pick up technical tips. An off-handed quip about a Teflon coating or an unpublished pH tweak might be just the thing to get a stuck experiment back on track once you get home.
Footnote: Down around the double-zeds are always a couple of rows of posters oriented toward K-12 neuroscience education. For all of the public outreach argle bargle one hears, my experience is these rows are deserted more often than not. Shame on you, professional neuroscientist jackasses. I always make it a point to visit these posters and talk with the youngsters. Give them encouragement, champion their cause. Mostly, I try to convince them to consider some other career path, like day trading or athletics. The funding pie is already thin enough.
You may cross paths with a big shot somewhere in your poster travels. These come in all shapes and sizes. Some parade through the rows carried aloft by scantily-clad showgirls like Billy Flynn. Others drift through as humble as a mouse. Famous or no, it can be a shock finally attaching a face to a name you've shared long hours with in print (so that's LabKitty? Hubba, hubba). It's like meeting a talk radio jock and discovering the tough-guy invisible persona doesn't quite jive with his little garter snake arms and stupid cowboy hat.
If you're starting to feel butterflies, it might not be from brushing up against fame or even from the conference dogs you ate. No, it would appear your time is at hand. Our brief overview of poster demand complete, we now turn to the supply side of the equation. Assume your assigned position on the parapets. For it's time for you to earn that per diem.
It's time to present your poster.
Your Poster: Your Gift, Your Curse
Bring a bottle of water and some Snausages, it's going to be a long day.
The free market divides poster presenters into haves and have-nots, depending on whether you "have" brought anything anyone is interested in hearing about or you have not. I've been on both sides of that line. I've had adoring crowds for the entire session. I've also had four hours of people trying to avoid eye contact as they pass. My first year I was in the tragic position of being a have-not and also being beside a big shot; I was physically pushed out of the way as the throngs thronged to get closer to the fame, desperate to touch the nous and success as if it were contagious. Don't take it personally.
Officially, you're not required to chaperone your poster for the entire session. But everybody does. Hope springs eternal, and you can never tell when Eric Kandel or Jimmy Watson will pop by, even though there's been nothing in your aisle except tumbleweeds since you arrived. Suck it up, nerd. Fame costs, and this is where you start paying.
Earlier, I mentioned The Spiel -- a stereotyped verbal overview that takes a visitor through your poster in about 10 minutes. Devise yours beforehand. Practice it in the hotel room. Out loud. Repeat until it is a polished perfect gem of clarity and concise erudition. Don't be self-conscious about saying the damn thing over and over at your poster for hours: everyone knows how the game is played.
Stand and Deliver
It can be intimidating for first-timers to posterize, knowing full well there's a hundred people in the room who understand your dissertation topic better than you ever will. It helps if you possess a flaming ego utterly disconnected from the veracity of your opinions. Unfortunately, that usually occurs later in your career (when you start writing a blog, for example).
Fear not. In my experience, people visiting your poster will remain polite, even when they are quite certain you are an idiot. This is not really a place for shouting matches. I'm told they happen, but I've never seen one. Das ist nicht zu tun, our German friends say. That is simply not done. Careers are destroyed at SFN with a raised eyebrow or a suppressed harrumph. Frankly, I'd think I would have preferred a shouting match. But whatever comes, at least you'll be spared public embarrassment or bad manners. It's like being in a PBS period drama, albeit with less public support.
Still, on rare occasion someone may try to stir up trouble. Is that a Western blot or did your head throw up? You must never never respond in kind. Instead, reply to their stupid mouth noise with a genuine answer that adds support to your case and substance to your presentation. Bonus points if you can parry their cretinous cake hole chatter with some good-natured humor (alas, a quip like I'm going to use your children's eyes for beads doesn't qualify as humor in this context). And if it helps, know that if your advisor is within earshot s/he is making a mental note of your tormentor. The next time they cross paths, s/he's going to play them like one of Pete Townshend's guitars.
At the end of the day, though, it's a marketplace of ideas not egos. The rare occasion when you are surrounded by people who are as bonkers about scaffolding proteins as you are. Remember every Thanksgiving when your relatives make scrunched up faces and ask "you do what again at the college"? The people visiting your poster are the opposite of that. Absolutely delighted that Daubechies wavelets are NP complete (that's what's known in the blogging trade as a "callback" -- see Part I). And willing to talk about it for hours. In the poster barn, on the way back to the hotel, in the bars and cable cars. An exuberation of camaraderie, a scamper of kindred souls so overcome with the joy of learning they make up words. A celebration of all things neuroscience, whether it's scaffolding proteins, or, um, some other topic.
That alone makes it all worthwhile, your trip a success. Yet, there is more. Much more.
Immediate Rewards: Vendor Swag
Once you've absorbed as much science as you possibly can (and you've visited the K-12 posters like I told you) then it's time for your reward: vendor swag. Halloween for grown-ups. The unspoken real reason for attending SFN (let's face it, everything else about the conference could be accomplished with Skype and pdfs).
The vendor booths are down at one end of the poster barn. Or maybe in the middle. I forget. It's mostly a blur, the heady thrill of swag confounding the senses like childhood Saturday morning cartoons after too many Frosted Sugar Bombs. The key here is first locating a vendor giving away tote bags as swag, which you can then use to put other vendor swag in (LabKitty: always thinking ahead). Pens, penlights, bookmarks, USB drives, fridge magnets, snow globes, pogs, t-shirts -- if it can hold text someone is offering it to buy your love and grant money. May your road lead you to warm sands, the vendor will humbly quip as they drop a novelty spongy brain festooned with their contact info into your tote.
Though it sounds impossible, there are wonders here beyond swag. No, not booth babes. Academics are above that. Would it kill Sutter to put some spandex on their gals? ain't exactly the sort of thing you'll hear from Nobel prize winners. Not out loud. The wonders are more sublime. Stop by Roboz and touch #5 Dumonts that aren't bent. It's like touching a unicorn. Go to Leica and look through microscopes yet to have an undergrad drill the objectives through a cover slip. Try out patch clamping robots and automatic gene arrays and other wonders your lab can't afford. Wonders that will one day make you obsolete as surely as the steam engine did John Henry.
Finally, vendors offer the concentrated essence of vendor: technical expertise. How do you get charred flesh off the power supply leads? Or: Every time we turn on our Nanopure, earthworms surface in the quad. These are the sort of interactions reps live for. The upside is you'll often be able to corner someone who can help you with a problem you're struggling with back at the lab. Sometimes they'll offer a complementary gewgaw you can try out. A connector or o-ring or napkin schematic that might be the ticket to solving whatever bee is in your bonnet. Be careful about accepting any chemistry-based assistance: the TSA discovering a free sample of TTX in your carry-on is going to create a wee bit of turbulence on the trip home.
Epilogue: There and Back Again
As the curtain falls on SFN, you emerge stronger, faster, better. If this was indeed your first visit, you have passaged your rite. The academic Crucible. The other Neuroscientists now stand in a silent line offering you their forearms, each baring the Breasted hieroglyphics from Kandel. You pass through that solemn honor guard and approach the hibachi blocking the exit, the ancient symbols that will be forever branded into your skin wavering in the crenelated heat. Press your forearms into the altar and lift it aside. Pain and white light, and the door opens. Your time here is done.
People tell me they return from SFN tan, rested, and ready. Recharged and eager to get back to the bench in a swirl of old, new, borrowed, and blue ideas. I return drained and depressed. Mostly because nine out of ten in this astonishing assembly of dedication and talent will never get a faculty position. Not at current funding levels. Not a chance. And they can't all be adjuncts or write blogs.
But for now, put the gun away. On returning to the Alma Mater, your advisor will probably want to hear how it went. Discuss highlights. Recount tales. Compare swag. Put up your poster somewhere to intimidate the undergraduates when they come to office hours. Unless you dumped yours at the hotel, and if so, shame on you (cf. "Ambassador of Science" in Part I). Remember: the tubes are reusable, even if the contents are not.
But mostly: make plans. Look forward with clear eyes and a shiny coat, and endeavor to better mankind (and womankind) and all its kittens. For that is what we do, you and I. Amidst the noise and the petty squabbling, the failed experiments and the dead ends, our people built the world. Who knows what wonders lie ahead in the coming year.
I leave as the lamb; I return as the lion, Richard Nixon said, I think. Sage advice as you prepare for your triumphant return to SFN next year, an event unlike graduation that shall be upon you before you know it.
No comments:
Post a Comment