Conference Reflection: SIGCSE 2019 - "What did go well" (Part 2 of 3)

While my first post may have implied I had no idea why I was going to SIGCSE nor what I would do when there, I actually did have some of both. It was just not enough. So the main idea of what went well was "at least I had something instead of nothing." And having nothing would have been far worse.

One straightforward thing I did to prepare was to look through the table of contents of the proceedings and bookmark interesting papers to read. However, I don't think bookmarking papers was sufficient. I should have actually looked through the papers before the conference and tried to connect with the authors if I found a paper really interesting.

I had goals, but they were unclear

While I said I did not have clear goals, I did have at least an idea of what I wanted my goals to be. These ideas centered around my podcast, research, and searching for people to fill my mentoring needs.

Podcast

For my podcast, I knew I wanted to promote it and find guest speakers. Unfortunately, that was as far as I had articulated my podcast goals. For the promotion goal, I settled on just talking about it when it seemed appropriate. For the finding guest speakers goal, thankfully, the night before the conference, I met an acquaintance with marketing experience and had the forethought to ask for ideas. This discussion helped me to create action steps. These steps boiled down to finding guests who were already well known, could talk about something directly related to the podcast's goals, and would be able to help spread the word about the podcast. I immediately thought of a set of people that could be those guests. Moreover, they were all attending SIGCSE. I managed to talk to most of these people in person, ask them about appearing on the podcast, and they all agreed!

Research

For my research goals, I ended up just talking to whoever I came across about what I was working on if they seemed interested. This goal, being the vaguest, unsurprisingly feels the least fulfilled. And I'm still not sure what I was going for with this one. Perhaps to try and find collaborators? Or to get a sense of whether what I was working on was interesting to people? Or to see if anyone would see holes in my current research thoughts that I hadn't seen yet? All reasonable but none were things I was intentionally trying to seek out.

Mentoring

For my mentoring needs goals, I knew what my mentoring needs were, but not how I would go about finding people to fill them. My needs were:

  1. Grant writing mentor because I had no experience writing grants,
  2. Research mentor because I feel I still have so much to learn and there are areas of research I want to go into but have little background in,
  3. Work-life balance mentor because I want to believe working 9-5 is possible, but I have yet to find someone who has "walked the walk."

My action steps towards this goal boiled down to just talking about it to people and asking if they knew anyone. I also looked through the schedule for events specifically geared towards these topics and sought them out. The results were small, but when it comes to goals like this, I think it takes time, and the only way to fill these needs is by actively talking about and seeking them out until something is found.

I had strategies for what I'd do while there, but they were vague

Despite my need to improve how I attend SIGCSE, this was not my first one. It was my fourth. So the overwhelm of going to SIGCSE, specifically, has worn off. Moreover, I have also attended many conferences with diverse locations and sizes. My conference experiences I think have given me some mental fortitude for tackling them.

Choosing sessions

My only strategy when deciding what to do at SIGCSE was to skip all paper sessions because I can just read the paper. In some ways, this strategy was great because it reduced my feeling of FOMO for not going and assuaged my conscience because I could just read the paper. However, there were still many sessions to choose from. So this strategy was not narrow enough.

Moreover, if I had looked through the papers I had bookmarked, it is entirely possible I would have gone to the paper session to meet and talk to the author. So I had a little FOMO regardless.

Networking

The most structured thing I did to prepare was rewatching a webinar "Networking for Introverts (and Extroverts, Too!): How to Make the Most of Your Next Conference" by Robbie Samuels on facultydiversity.org. Its suggestions were wonderfully concrete on both my mindset while at the conference and some canned things I could do that were easy to remember and clear.

My favorite mindset strategy was to think of myself as a host. The webinar pointed out that even if you aren't one of the organizers, you can still adopt a host mindset for the conference. This idea greatly appealed to me because it gave me something to do and a way to help others. I executed this mindset in a variety of ways. I introduced myself to people in the hallways, elevators, and during coffee breaks, especially if they were by themselves and seemed a little lost. I asked how their experience was going, what they did and why they were there, etc. If I knew of someone that might be useful for them to talk to, I'd at least mention the name or, if the person was nearby, make an introduction.

The canned things I used most from the webinar were "croissants not bagels" and networking emails. The "croissants not bagels" idea is simple, if you are standing in a group, make sure there is a gap to let others into, a "croissant," rather than stand in a circle, a "bagel." This was a simple body language technique I used that was easy to adopt and did result in people joining some croissants. For networking emails, the webinar suggested, first of all, to create networking email templates before going to the conference based on what kind of networking you wanted to have. Second, the webinar made concrete suggestions of what to put in an email that closed the "networking loop" for the people I met that I didn't currently have a need to follow up with extensively. The latter email generally fell along the lines of "it was nice to meet you, let's connect on our preferred professional social media of choice."

Conclusion

So things were not as dire as I potentially made them out to be in the first post of this sequence. I knew what I should do, I just didn't execute on those ideas to the end. The post of this sequence "What I will do next time" discusses my current thoughts going forward and plans on how to think through these things more.

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