How do you prepare to attend a conference where you may have trouble following the talks?

Question

I am fairly new to academic conferences. I am registered to attend (not present at) a mathematics conference (graph theory, to be specific) in about a week and a half; I recently received the agenda and, based on the topic, some of the talks seem a little "advanced" for me. I have a decent general understanding of the topic (I have an undergraduate math degree and a master's degree in computer science), but am still unfamiliar with some of the advanced topics.

What do I do in cases like this? How can one do self-study to prepare for conferences like this to make sure that you'll understand the topics?

Also, how much of the talks "should" one expect to be able to comprehend? How much is "normal" for individuals at various "levels" in the field (e.g. undergraduate students, graduate students, working mathematicians)?

I do realize that, given the short time frame, there'll probably be a limit to how much I can do to prepare for this particular conference. However, I would like to be better prepared for future conferences in this area.

Answer 1

Nobody can know everything. Even just in mathematics the last time it was possible to literally know it all was early in the 20th century. Things have advanced too fast and too far for such things now.

A conference might be expected to present the latest ideas in a sub field. If that is your specialty you would be expected to follow "generally" but would probably require additional study afterwards if the subject of a talk was important to your work. But a "general understanding" and a few notes about how and where to follow up is probably enough for most people.

I doubt that your education, as you describe it, puts you at the research edge in graph theory. If you are doing research in that, then a quick literature survey of closely relevant topics would be good preparation, but I'd guess that few people do that. If the proceedings are available in advance, skimming the papers will give you an idea of where the holes are in your understanding.

But at the conference take a few notes, especially on topics that are not known to you, as a guide for further study. If you attend (physically or virtually) with colleagues, start a conversation over coffee/tea/whatever to ask others for their insights.

On the other hand, if one of the speakers is your dissertation advisor, you'd probably be expected to understand most of it. Or at least grasp the general trend of thought.

Math is pretty esoteric at the edges.

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Another kind of "preparation", however, is to prepare to meet new people and share a few ideas. Harder now with thing mostly virtual, but a great way to build contacts.

Answer 2

Excellent answers here already. I will try to add a little.

Part of the reason for attending a conference like this is to learn what's out there that you may want to learn - not necessarily to understand it there. So read the abstracts and decide which presentations to attend (if the conference is large there will be simultaneous ones).

You may find times when no talk is even close to your interests. Skip those. Take the time for a cup of coffee - maybe with someone you introduced yourself to at an earlier time. Other junior people like you will be easier to connect to than senior featured speakers. Making connections is as important as learning from the talks.

This is from https://www.conference-service.com/conferences/graph-theory.html about the 25th Ontario Combinatorics Workshop 15 May 2021 - 16 May 2021 • Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada (maybe it's the one you're going to)

The objective of this meeting is to have an atmosphere conducive to research discussion and collaboration. The setting of the meeting is informal to provide a friendly environment for students and post-doctoral fellows to present their results, to exchange ideas, and to gain exposure to various topics in combinatorics. It is also a place where students and faculties meet, which may foster future collaborations.

Answer 3

You don't go to conferences to hear things you already know. You go to conferences to learn about things you don't know yet.

In that respect, you are in the perfect situation: You have lots to learn, and you will learn a lot. You should look forward to the conference, rather than being stressed about it.

Of course, the stuff you learn will be different from what people who are experts in the field will learn. But this is not the point: You will learn lots of things which are new to yourself, and this is what counts. (In fact, you will likely learn much more than the people who are familiar with the field: The conferences where I learned the most new things were certainly the ones which were out of my own comfort zone.)

Of course, you should try to do something to increase your learning experience. As far as I would say, this mostly means talking to people at the conference, in particular about the things you would like to understand better.

You will notice while at the beginning, there will be lots of things you won't understand, this will get better by the end of the conference, since you will have learned a lot of new things.

And if you feel like you don't understand a word, keep in mind that at most conferences most of the attendants can't follow a non-negligible part of the talks!

Enjoy the conference!

Answer 4

There's a saying that each talk should contain a part that everybody understands, a part that only the experts understand, and a part that only the speaker understands (some also include: a part that the speaker does not understand either). When you're not an expert (as most people on most subjects) the point of going to a talk is to understand the first part and get the general flavour of the argument from the remaining parts.

I would advise against trying to prepare for a conference. To me, conference talks serve as an invitation to read the corresponding paper(s) or study the subject. If a talk catches your interest or turns our to be relevant to your research, then it's the time to study. Plus, there's a fair chance the recordings of the talks are going to be available online so you can revisit them later, and if not you can always ask the speakers for a copy of the slides (they're almost universally happy to comply).

Answer 5

This is a non-math perspective, but similar problems are faced in other fields as well.

As correctly mentioned in another answer, nobody can know everything. As a corollary, nobody at a conference will attend/carefully listen to all the talks (even if it were possible to). Time and mindspace are both limited, so it is a good idea to plan beforehand which talks/presentations to attend. I personally don't like to attend more than 3 in one session (assuming each is 20 odd minutes). This allows time to absorb and network, which is an important part of conferences.

Once you've chosen the talks to attend, it may help to do some background reading on the speaker rather than the topic itself. If you read some of the recent work done by them, you may get a better perspective of their direction, way of approaching the problem, and this may help you follow the talk better. The same topic can be interpreted quite differently by different speakers (again, I don't know if this is true in math), so reading up on the subject will not necessarily going to equip you well. Knowing the general research interests of the speaker will atleast facilitate a discussion with them (most speakers are happier to talk to you if you have some familiarity with their work).

Answer 6

Personally I go to talks I don't understand all the time. I love diving in over my head and getting to know a new field. If something looks really cool, then I go read the paper. Or sometimes I just read the interesting papers that the speakers cite, rather than the speakers' own papers.

Many people do the opposite --- they read in advance the abstracts of all the talks and then the papers of the talks that seem most to their research and then go into the talk prepared to either learn or ask questions. This is just a matter of personal choice and style of learning, and maybe discipline as some may be be easier to communicate in talks than others.

Other people only go to the conference to pick up the proceedings and schmooze. They think you never learn anything from talks, you should just read the papers, and you get the real work done at conferences through meeting people and collaborating.

Sadly, some people go to conferences only to be seen, or perhaps as some weird ritual of academia, and don't seem to be trying to learn at all. I don't understand that and I'm glad you aren't in that category. You are off to a great start to be asking this question!

Answer 7

The first thing is I think it's important to have low expectations in terms of how many talks you'll really get something out of. When I go to a conference I feel like it's been a really good day if there's one talk that I really got something important out of. And that doesn't mean I understood the whole talk!

The other key thing (both as someone going to a talk and as someone presenting) is that a large function of a talk is to serve to advertise and introduce a paper. Sometimes that means the talk leads me to go read the paper, sometimes it just means I'm aware that a certain result is part of a certain authors work and then I can find it if it turns out that I need it down the road, and sometimes it lets me understand a paper that I tried to read but failed to understand. So don't think of the talks as something that you need to prepare for, but rather the talks are the preparation to read papers at some later point. As a grad student its fine if you don't understand any of the details of any of the talks, if it means you've learned a bit about what kind of questions which people in your field are working on. Then you'll learn who would be interested in your results and where to look if you need certain kinds of techniques.

Answer 8

There's a helpful approach that I've heard ascribed to Uri Treisman with the Emerging Scholars programs he developed in California and Texas. This is for students from various groups who historically don't do well in calculus. In addition to extra sessions with specially trained TAs, the students in the program also attend math research talks! Here's the advice they were given.

There are people who love going to the opera. It's usually not because they speak the language of the libretto, know the plot well, or have memorized the score. Rather, they find it a beautiful experience and enjoy whatever they get out of the evening---the staging, the emotions, the melodies, the costumes, the orchestra... Going to a math research talk is like going to the opera: Almost certainly you won't understand every idea presented, just enjoy what you can---the overall structure, examples, small details, how it's similar to or different from other talks, possible connections that pop into your mind...

Answer 9

1. Pace. This applies even with ACCESSIBLE, enjoyable conferences (like chemistry). Go through your book and make a list of the talks and do some selection of them. Not 100%. Something well short of that. You just don't have the capacity to get use out of the stuff anyways. Look at the list and decide which ones are interesting or comprehendable or close to you or cute speaker or whatever criteria. (It won't be perfect and you will miss something interesting and go do something not, but forcing a selection process increases investment and you will have some Bayesian effectiveness also.) When taking a break, grab a longer coffee. Check email, whatever.

2. If it is a several day conference try and sneak off and do a half day golfing. Or at least look someone up in town (outside the conference) for dinner. Obviously don't completely ditch the conference. But get a little non-binded-oxen-mouth grain.

3. Emphasize coffees, beer drinking, etc. CHITCHAT!

4. Make it a goal to come back with at least one collaboration. Make it a game and see what you can do. Cool things happen at "boundaries". Preferrably something small, tangible. (Not some grand collaboration that we read about here with sob stories of not getting published. But just some human "connection". Shit is so lonely otherwise.)