Every summer since 2008, I’ve gone to a big scientific meeting.  Meetings are one of my favorite parts of being a scientist.  It’s exciting to see all the newest ideas in my particular subfield and to learn more about subfields I’m interested in, but don’t have time to teach myself about.  I’m becoming more and more involved with ecoinformatics and attended a great panel on some recent work in that field.  Transient Theorist has some great thoughts on the panel and the field in general.

Meetings are also important for networking – it’s much easier to email a potential advisor for graduate school when you’ve been introduced to them at a meeting, seen one of their talks, or gone to dinner with their grad students.

The best part about meetings, though, is catching up with all my science friends and being surrounded by people eager to talk about science.  I always come to the meeting tired and frustrated and leave rejuvenated and full of new approaches and ideas for my work.

I also love how the meetings give me an opportunity to get out of my teeny college town and spend some time in a city.

View from convention center roof

There’s time for a little exploration of the city, but for the most part, I spend most of my time inside the convention center.  The convention center for this year’s meeting was big, bright, and airy.  There were even little birds that lived inside.  For pictures, check out Karina’s post.