Final Thoughts on Photon 14

As a finally summing up about my experience at Photon 14, here's short list of some ideas and thoughts about the conference and what I might do at conferences in the future.

Just in case you missed my original Photon conference diaries, they can be found in 3 parts here, here and here.

So after Photon 14 I think that....

1. Poorly constructed talks really annoy me so I promise to do my best to always construct my talks well.
   At the conference I saw a few talks that really missed the mark for me. Most of the problems stemmed from a very simple sentence, "I'll just skip over this slide for time". Now, to me that smacks of being under prepared and to an extent I think it doesn't look very professional. Another pet hate I had was "Here's a concept that is important to this work but my colleague will talk about that in a few minutes". If its important to your work you should describe it, I might not be here for the rest of the session. Other's peoples talks shouldn't be used to convey your key concepts, as we don't all have the luxury of that and it isn't fair. So rant over, to sum up this means that I think that it's important that you have rehearsed your talk well and that it is fully self contained.
2. Tablets are useful and yet not useful at the same time for note taking.
   I made notes on my iPad during the conference which, on the one hand, worked really well as I didn't have to write them up and struggle with my dodgy handwriting! On the other hand it was actually harder for me to type and listen than write and listen, but I got better at that with practice so I think that wouldn't be a problem next time. Also, there was quite a temptation to procrastinate as there was all of the internet at my fingertips. So, I found the best way to use a tablet was to turn the wifi off and use a note-taking program to help with taking my notes.
3. You should always tell people what you are doing.
   It's well worth explaining what you do to anyone you meet at a conference, as you never know where it might lead. I spoke to a couple of people about what I did and one conversation might well lead to a collaboration. So it's always well worth having an elevator pitch of your project to hand just in case!
4. You should take in concepts in talks that don't necessarily link directly to your work
   I found it was worth really listening in all biologically related talks as it actually helped me notice trends in research and work out where I might fit on the greater landscape of research (and what might make my work stand out). Even in some of the very tangentially related stuff it's worth taking stuff in. I found finding out about the amazing properties of fibre optic cables really interesting. It is something I'll remember and you never know, it might come in handy someday! 

And that concludes my coverage of my last conference of the year! 

I don't know if I'll be going to many more conferences in the next twelve months as I might just be chained to my desk writing. But I hope than my diaries and thoughts on my experiences have been interesting and (hopefully) entertaining too!