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<\/a><\/p>\nInstead of thinking about experiments, papers and grants in the familiar environment of your own lab, you are thrust into a throng of many hundreds of people whose scientific interests overlap and diverge in a complex intellectual Venn. Inside the same Venn unit, these people can be friends, or long-standing competitive enemies, or strangers of uncertain provenance who need to be sniffed out and analyzed for their potential to fall into one or the other group in the future. Sometimes, there is a fine line between enemy and friend; you can be on great terms with a scientist but deeply uneasy about telling them anything of substance about your own work, in case they might be given an ill-advised clue. Outside your own particular Venn, passing scientists can be so much white noise, fellow companions on a completely different journey studying topics that have little relevance to your own work.<\/p>\n
Instead of experiencing scientific knowledge through the immediacy of test tubes and physical results, or the polished, almost sterile patina of published research on paper, conference-goers are immersed in a grey zone of works in progress, often presented in a manner that makes the results feel more solid than they actually are. It’s very difficult to critique an eight-minute talk or a meter-square piece of paper when you put your preliminary findings up for public scrutiny on the podium or posterboard. You want to advertise how far along your work is, to discourage competitors from trying to beat you to the punchline, but you don’t want to give anything crucial away too soon, either. So the delicate dance plays out a thousand different ways all over the various carpeted, air-conditioned levels of the conference center, in hushed auditoria or over scorched coffees or cheap Merlot – researchers sizing one another up, probing their respective projects, wondering exactly what is being held back or what might be slightly exaggerated for best effect.<\/p>\n
I was terribly proud of my research assistant, Harry, for defending himself admirably against a veritable onslaught of curious (and largely friendly) visitors to our poster from various competitor labs at the American Society for Microbiology – we’ve only recently come onto the scene, so it was good to make a favorable impression. Not least because this poster marks a career milestone in my own career: my first poster as the senior author.<\/p>\n
I feel like I’ve been away from the lab, and home, for years. Traveling and intense mental exertion (to say nothing of sleep deprivation and jet-lag) can be made sweeter by social episodes at the end of the day – like a spontaneous congregation at this friendly pub in Temple Bar, Dublin on a lingering, nearly-summer evening.<\/p>\n But I am looking forward to flying home tomorrow, at long last, to restart my real life once again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the past few weeks I’ve been traveling the globe at back-to-back conferences – hence the silence here. The conference universe has its own natural laws, and time flows differently as its strict routines overwrite all of your own normal … Continue reading ![\"PosterSesh\"](\"http:\/\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2873\/8903489025_535e1bedac.jpg\")
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