It was a rookie mistake. In April, just months after establishing his own lab at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Leonard Foster strolled through the booths at the Keystone Symposium on Proteomics and Bioinformatics in Keystone, Colorado, chatting up friendly vendors during a break. "I was slammed with meetings for two weeks after that, with people trying to get me to buy equipment," he recalls. He is wiser now to the different behaviour needed by a postdoc trawling for free T-shirts and by a new investigator hoping to make the right connections. Attending scientific conferences early in the pretenure years can be critical for networking, recruitment and visibility. The informality and intimacy of smaller meetings usually affords the best opportunities for getting to know senior scientists in a field and for keeping up with major developments. There's no magic formula for becoming a prime schmoozer (nor is it even recommended), but people with experience can offer advice on making a good impression.
展开▼
