Why Host the Conference?

  So why go to all this trouble?  What are the benefits to a group of post-grads for organising a conference? 

 Well, it’s good experience!  Skills and experience relevant to organizing meetings and conferences is valuable in any future careers and universally attractive to employers.  As PhD graduates we’ll be competing with bright researchers from the worlds top academic institutions and something like organising and hosting a well known conference (at least within one’s own fields) provides a nice edge over competitors.  In other words, it looks very good on your C.V.s!

Hosting the conference is also an opportunity to enhance one’s reputation by spreading your name around, both at the conference and after in reports for newsletters, conference abstract books, word of mouth etc.  It will also do wonders for the Univesity of Manchester.  It presents an opportunity to showcase not only your own research but also your institution to your peers.  This might be particularly important if your research group has a specific focus or unique strength that might be emphaized in the conference (For instance, our group specializes in high performance 3D modelling, hence the visualisation session in our conference).  This will have a knock-on effect for us in that we will be obtaining PhDs from a University well known for excellence and innovation in palaeontology.

Finally (and most importantly) – it should be fun and rewarding!  Make no mistake, it will be hard work but when things start to fall into place its a great buzz!

Karl + Peter

~ by mapalaeo on 31 August, 2007.