Speaker 1: How to network effectively at academic conferences. Today, I'm giving you my top seven tips. Hi everybody, I'm Dr. Amelia Aldeo. I'm a Yale trained clinical psychologist and I'm also a former research professor at Ohio State. I used to be a director of a lab studying anxiety and depression. And today, we're talking about networking. How to make the most out of academic conferences. When I was a graduate student at Yale, the professors told us from the very beginning that it was super important that we build our own research collaborations. So from day one, networking was very, very much front and center. As I went to my first few conferences, I focused not only on the science, so not only on the talks and the posters and all that stuff, but also on meeting people and making connections. And I gotta say, some of the best collaborations in my academic career have come from people that I met at conferences. So today, I have seven tips for you. Tip number one, do your homework ahead of time. Identify people that you're interested in meeting. This might take a little bit of work, but go through the entire program and find all of the talks, all of the posters you're interested in. Then, figure out who are the key researchers and send them an email. Ask them if they want to grab coffee or chat for a few minutes. Now, many of them are not gonna respond. Some of them are gonna be busy, but a handful of them are likely to say yes. So there you have it. Before you even go to the conference, you already have set up meetings with people whose work you admire. That might lead to a collaboration or even to a job in the future. Number two, reconnect with people from your past. When we think of networking, we tend to be so fixated on expanding the network and meeting new people that we tend to forget about the value of those connections we already have. So take a look. Who's going to the conference from your past, from the lab you used to work at as an undergrad or as a post-bac, or in your early days in grad school, or so on and so forth. And even if it doesn't seem like you have a lot in common, let's say maybe they research another topic, you know, a completely different area, still, talk to them. You never know. Maybe they're looking to work in the same area you're working on. Or maybe they can simply be a sounding board and give you advice. Or they can connect you with other people that actually do work in your area. So definitely look into the past as well. Number three, go to the poster sessions. I know they can be not that exciting because the research is very preliminary and it's all very up in the air, but trust me, it's a great way of meeting students. So whether you're a student looking to expand your network, or maybe you're a post-doc or a professor looking to hire people next year, definitely this is a place to go. I gotta tell you, I have made some of the most amazing connections at poster sessions. One of them is Katie Dixon-Gordon. She's a professor now at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and she studies emotion regulation in borderline personality disorder. And when we met, I was doing studies on emotion regulation in generalized anxiety disorder. And we were actually looking at very similar paradigms. So we started giving each other tips and advice. We kept talking and talking and talking. And over the years, we did a number of studies together and we published some amazing work together. So definitely go to the poster session. Number four, go to the events by special interest groups, or they might have a different name in different conferences. But these are the groups that are very much focused on a particular topic or a particular population. They're very small, they're very intimate, they're a great opportunity for making new connections that actually have a lot of depth. Number five, stay in the center of the action. If you have work to do, don't go to your room, stay in the lobby or some other common area in the convention center. Why? Because it's gonna increase the chances that you run into people. Similarly, if you're going to plan events for your lab, say a happy hour or a dinner, try to find a place that is local, a place that is close to the hotel or the convention center. Again, this is going to maximize the chances of running into people you know and of making new connections. Also, if you're staying with friends in another part of town, try to set up your schedule so that you maximize how much time you spend at the conference. It can be really tempting to hang out with friends, to have a mini college reunion, but trust me, you're here to work. Every minute counts. Every minute you're at a conference is another opportunity to meet another person. And last but not least, don't play tourist. Many times, conferences are in really exciting places like New York or Orlando or the Bay Area or Chicago. If you really want to get to know the city, see if you can extend your stay by a day or two, but don't use up any of the time from the conference. Number six, be positive. We spend so much time in academia critiquing every little piece of every study. And don't get me wrong, this is very important. This is how science is done and this is what makes us good researchers. But when you meet somebody at a conference, don't spend all this time telling them about all the things that are wrong with their study or how you did something that is better. Focus on what you like about their work. Find common ground and see if you can build a collaboration out of that. Number seven, send a follow-up note. We meet a lot of people at conferences. It's really easy to get people confused or to forget about people and you want to stay on people's radars. So if you talked about a study, send them the article. If you had a question, follow up on those. If you talked about a potential collaboration, set up time, see if you can explore that further. Don't wait until the next conference. Be active, stay on people's radars. So I'm very excited for you guys to try the tips. Tell me how it goes by leaving comments in the section below. Also, if you have other tips that have worked for you, let me know also by leaving comments below. And as always, don't forget to like the video, subscribe to the channel and share with friends. I'll see you guys next time, bye bye.