Academic conferences are significantly important in the initial professional development of students and researchers. Attending a research conference is an extraordinary method to build your research career. They offer the opportunity to network, meet new associates or authors, find out about the most recent research improvements, get feedback on your work, and comprehend the bigger picture of your field. Attending research conferences for the first time can be daunting, as a student you won’t understand a ton of the discussions, Attempt to keep up on the grounds that it’ll assist you with learning the dialect. Yet don’t get discouraged when you get lost, it happens to most of them. In the case of something looks attractive, write down the author’s name and begin looking for similar stuff, when you return home.
There are countless educational and social advantages of attending academic conferences, however, this article highlights the main points that will be very fruitful in your life as a researcher.
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1. To know about the latest research
The research conferences are always inspirational and motivating for researchers. It gives you the chance to know about the latest finding and methods of solving different problems in your field before they even published in the journals. Another fascinating factor about academic conferences is that, by looking at other’s people work and effort, a person gets motivated to do more work in his area of interest.
“A measure of one’s success is the degree of the positive influence that you have on someone else’s life as well as your own.’’
Therefore, attending a research conference is very beneficial in term of looking at other’s people work and compare your work with them.
2. Networking with researchers and experts
Probably the greatest advantage of going to a research conference has to become acquainted with the experts or the likeminded people in your field. This is one of the easiest ways to build connections with experts in your field. It is always healthy and motivational to have likeminded and skillful people around you. Networking is very much important in all aspects. Possibly you require suggestions from a group of person in the same field, or want to share your research proposal with the experts, or looking for the experts to come and give a talk at your institution, this is the place to be. Good academic conferences are ultimately providing the opportunity to identify potential colleagues to work with in future projects and to meet them directly.
3. Improvement in soft skills
Attending academic conferences will immensely help you in developing strong soft skills. In research conferences, an academic researcher will attend the conference, present his research in front of expert researchers and other fellows, this will boost your presentation skills, confidence, and help in building better public speaking abilities. Presenting your work, will not only increase your confidence but will give you a new perspective about your work, as individuals may pose inquiries and questions that make you unexpectedly consider your undertaking. Participating in the academic conference will help you to learn efficient time management. In fact, one of the greatest things about attending academic conferences is the development of better social and soft skills. There might be a chance, you could hear some Nerdist joke at the conference.
4. Pay yourself by learning
Going to a research conference is one approach to know different teachers and researchers in your own field. What’s more, also introducing an academic conference is one approach to boost your knowledge and CV. How far are you ready to pay the expense of setting off to a conference, be it nearby or worldwide. Okay! say it is justified, despite all the trouble to utilize your own cash to introduce your own exploration?
“If your plan is for 1 year, plant rice. If your plan is for 10 years, plant trees, if your plan is for 100 years, educate children.” – Confucius
Therefore, you cannot just miss the research conference, just due to the shortage of money, or you won’t consider it worth spending for. Thus, spending money on an academic conference will give you back in the form of improved soft skills, and provide you better networking opportunities.
5. Finding a potential supervisor
Going to a research conference will give you the chance to listen and learn from the work of others. There might be a chance, you can find a potential supervisor whose current research area is parallel to your field of interest. You can follow and get the benefits from professor’s expertise.
6. Receiving feedback
Collecting feedback from experts is a vital part of your learning process. An academic conference presents the opportunity to see an entire room brimming with world-class specialists in your specific field, so there’s no better opportunity to get your work before these experts and have them authentically talk about its strong points and weakness. A researcher needs to collect feedback on his work from the experts because it will assist him in the nature of his work on a deeper level.
7. Opportunity to exchange ideas
Meeting new individuals with various perspectives in your field of study, will give you a new way of thinking. You will observe a portion of a wide range of different perspectives and opinions which exist on similar issues. Thus, an academic conference will give you the chance to look and ponder on other people’s thoughts as well as presents your ideas in a diversified environment.
8. Chances of winning the best paper award
Different research conferences have set the different awards that will be distributed at the end of the conference. For instance, best overall paper award, best student paper award, best technical design paper award, best poster design award, etc. Attending an academic conference and presenting your work will give you the opportunity to be nominated in different awards. Winning a conference award will boost your CV and career as a researcher.
9. Bonus for you
Conference publications have a different set of weightages, if you show your work effectively, and side by side you’re hunting for a postgraduate scholarship, this will really be going to positively affect your selection procedure because, professors mostly prefer excellent scientific written skills with publications in a well reputed journal. Both are valuable but try to follow things according to your goal. If you are a graduate with low CGPA, a conference publication can help to compensate the low CGPA.