Conferences: a typical scenario

It's 7 a.m. and I'm in a strange bedroom. I know I have to get up to face a very large free breakfast and a long first full day at my chosen conference. My colleagues from the lab are in rooms down the hall. When I left them in the bar last night they were getting in the next round of drinks, so I don't expect to see them much before lunch. Still, I have a busy day of networking ahead of me, and I have a plan to help me extract the maximum value from my conference. After I left the bar last night, I took a highlighter pen to my newly acquired book of abstracts. At least I now know which talks I want to see this morning. I will go through this afternoon's sessions during the morning break, and then this evening I can try to make my selections for the remainder of the week.

It's now 9 a.m. and I'm sitting wide-eyed in a vast conference room waiting for the first speaker. It's interesting how some people seem to sit through whole sessions while others flit from talk to talk in different lecture theatres and seminar rooms. I've always found too many different interesting things in the programme to take the former approach.