Week 5 – Why Do We Need To Attend Conferences?

S1: The goal of the organizer is to show the trends of academia, collecting the latest ideas from the whole fields.

S2: Experts in different tracks come together to discuss their own research. They may come up with a new inter-tracks idea or evaluate the same methodology from different angles.

S3: People or even co-authors from different counties can meet during the conferences.

Prof.: Ture, exchanging ideas is a big part of attending a conference. How about others?

S1: Social networking!

S3: People from different colleges attend a conference. Networking is important for Ph.D. application. Before she applied Temple, she noticed a lot of applicants have already met the Ph.D. recruiters at the conferences.

Prof. Why conferences have breaks? Even 30 mins break? Why do we need to network?

Prof: We are in business School. Our papers are judged by other peers. No absolute double-blind reviewing. Therefore, networking plays an important role in the publication process. You need to build a group of researchers to connect with a pool of potential reviewers to nominate as reviewers. Before the publication, it takes years to revise the paper. Therefore, networking during these years is important.

Prof. My first US IS conference is one of the awful experiences in my life. I did not know most of the attendees. Therefore, I just talked with some Ph.D. students. Today, those students currently researchers in different universities and they are doing quite well in IS research. The connection established several years and then last long during my career. I recommend you talk with people on a conference, starting from people from your own counties or same fields.

Next time, talking with guest speakers you have met on MIS or your weekly seminars.

Prof: How to choose Conference? You may need to focus on small conferences.

S2: Large conference may involve a lot of topics may quite unrelated to your owns.

Prof: I will show you the difference between large conferences and small ones.

Prof: AMA and ICIS are too big to have an opportunity talking with others. The likelihood to meet the people next time is relatively low. It is important to take a home conference to attend every year.

S2: Then you can build your own reputation within a group.

Prof: You need to attend the home conference serval times. The people will know you for years. Conferences are evolving. WISE is turning crowed. Then small conferences pop up, such as SCECR, CIST. Attending these small conferences every year and do not hesitate to join the social events.

S3:  How about NBER workshops?

Prof: It is not the core group of IS. We need to keep in touch with the core senior researchers within your own fields. You may lack connection with people in other fields. I attended some public policy conference. I find it is hard to get in the other groups. Then I just attend them and present my papers and learn new ideas. The networking function of the attending a conference cannot be my first priority.

S2: How to follow up with the people we meet after conferences?

Prof: Emails, SNS, you can contact them by different means. We teach SNS; we should use it.

S3: Also attending a conference it more like a self-branding process!

Prof: Ture!

S4: I find it is hard to talk with others during a conference as a junior Ph.D. student. Do you have some suggestions?

S3: Stay with your advisors, s/he will help introduce you to the related researchers when you attend your first conference.

Prof: Remember not to do this when you are on the market! You should be an independent researcher by then.

Prof: More, try to be the conversation starters by reading their papers in advance and follow them on SNS, etc.