Isabella Sanders GPC
If you’re like me, most, if not all of your conferences have been shifted to virtual for the upcoming school year. This is disappointing, and an unfortunate side effect of the Pandemic that has disrupted our way of life. However, for conferences that haven’t been cancelled, there is a lot to gain.
The first step in making the most of your virtual conference experience is identifying what you loved about in-person conferences. Here is the short list of what I came up with:
From this list, figure out how you can continue to have these experiences in a virtual environment. Some may be impossible, but most should be manageable with a little bit of creativity. Let’s go through my list:
I hope that you have gained some ideas for how to enhance your virtual conference experience!
P.S. The GradSWE leadership team is gathering information and statistics on grad student participation at the annual SWE conference, WE20, so that we can better tailor our programming towards YOU! Please fill and forward this survey to all your GradSWE friends!
https://forms.gle/hd5uaESQG27impQM8
The first step in making the most of your virtual conference experience is identifying what you loved about in-person conferences. Here is the short list of what I came up with:
- Attending talks
- Travel
- Meeting up with colleagues
- Meeting new colleagues and friends
- Trying new things
From this list, figure out how you can continue to have these experiences in a virtual environment. Some may be impossible, but most should be manageable with a little bit of creativity. Let’s go through my list:
- Attending Talks – This one is pretty easy; most conferences will have either prerecorded talks or live video sessions that conference goers can attend. How can we make it more fun? You may want to plan to attend certain talks with some of your university colleagues and schedule a video conference after to discuss your thoughts.
- Travel – Unfortunately, this one is probably going to have to be taken off the list. However, there are things you can do in its place. During conferences I like to try new restaurants. In substitution, I’m going to try to order food from a local restaurant that I’ve never had before.
- Meeting up with colleagues – One of the main appeals of conferences is getting to meet up with your friends and colleagues that you don’t normally see on a normal basis. My plan is to schedule video chats with these colleagues during the time frame of the conference, so I still get to catch up with them! Maybe even do snack or coffee time over video chat to emulate the true conference experience.
- Meeting new colleagues and friends – A lot of virtual conferences are still holding social hours during the conferences. Attend these! Some of them will break out into smaller sessions allowing attendees to get to know each other on a more intimate basis.
- Trying new things – For virtual conferences I’ve scoured conference websites for new activities that may have not been available at an in-person conference. You never know what you might find. For example, I found a conference that was hosting a live trivia session!
I hope that you have gained some ideas for how to enhance your virtual conference experience!
P.S. The GradSWE leadership team is gathering information and statistics on grad student participation at the annual SWE conference, WE20, so that we can better tailor our programming towards YOU! Please fill and forward this survey to all your GradSWE friends!
https://forms.gle/hd5uaESQG27impQM8
