2 minute read

Travel is eye opening and you can learn an awful deal just by getting out of a day-to-day routine.

I used to think that scientists/ engineers are only good in the lab or working behind a desk. This is far from the case! A lot of scientists do field work/ experimental collaborations abroad and attend meetings internationally. For me, I moved around different cities for jobs and in my previous role in industry I attended 2 trade shows (London, Birminhgam) and 2 conferences (Stuttgart, Helsinki) on behalf of the company and learnt a lot from it. Others on my team got sent to San Francisco for Photonics West, which is the largest photonics symposium, and ECCV, which is the largest computer vision event in Europe. It did help that I was a customer-facing engineer but these are some tips if you spot an event you want to attend.

The first thing you must do if you want to take on these opportunities, especially if you’re young, is to establish yourself as a competent, eloquent and trusted team member. Your line manager should feel comfortable to send you out externally knowing that you can represent the group/ company and make a good impression on others. It took around 6-9 months for me to get to this stage after doing some internal presentations, client calls and reports. After that, you should start noting down events you’d like to attend and start asking!

One great mentor at my previous company said the most stupid thing you can do is not asking!

Tips for asking your boss for sponsorship to attend conferences/ summer schools

🤘🏼In case you are also a young professional working in industry, I think joining conferences and summer schools are a good way to learn about things outside your day-to-day and to meet interesting people. SIGGRAPH have a really good “Get your boss on-board” template article which you can use to persuade whoever is in charge. I am not too familiar with the process in academia, probably there is a formal application for funding from specific funding bodies, but I am sure that there are similarities!

In summary you should mention

  1. what the event is about? What is the field it is in? How big is it? Is is prestigious? Make sure it is of a decent size and actually relevant to your team/ company.
  2. the value it brings to the company/ group (emphasise this)
    1. Marketing value: is there a poster you can present to the audience? Remember to include an estimate of how many people attend the event and the split (industry/ academia)
    2. Practical value: what methods can you learn from the conference and bring back to the team? Is there a talk that you would like to attend?
    3. Networking value: will this generate new leads/ start new collaborations?
  3. that it’s also for your personal development
  4. Also remember to give an estimate of the costs and a detailed breakdown (transport, accomodation, registration, food)
  5. When is the decision deadline?
  6. That you will write a report so other team members can learn from your experience

What else can you do?

Some conferences have options to present industry insights/ posters/ conference papers. Even if you don’t work in a research team, some conference workshops have quite high acceptance rates so it’s always worth giving it a try.

Your line-manager is not obliged to give you this opportunity, but there’s nothing stopping you from putting the best case forward!

Updated: