Navigating a Professional Meeting

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Navigating a Professional Meeting

• Maria Gini
• Dept of CSE, University of Minnesota

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My background

• Faculty at the University of Minnesota for more
  than 20 years
• 40 faculty in the Department
• Large undergraduate program (550 students, 130
  graduates/year) and large graduate program (200
  PhD students, 15-20 graduates/year)
• Research in AI, robotics, multi-agent systems

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Outline

• We will start with basic information on
  professional meetings
• How to decide where to submit a paper?
• What to do when a paper is rejected?
• What when it is accepted?
• We will work through different scenarios and ask
  you to play different roles
• Not much talk by me
• some acting by everyone!

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How to decide where to submit a paper?

• There are many types of meetings
• Workshops
• Symposia
• Conferences (national or international)
• Society conferences (ACM, IEEE, SIAM, AAAI, etc)
  and for profit conferences
• Your advisor is the best judge of the quality of
  the conference and the relevance of your work to
  it.
• One important caveat do not submit unless you
  plan on attending if your paper is accepted

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What to do when a paper is rejected?

• Rejections hurt, but forget your pride and take
  constructive actions.
• Learn from the reviewers comments.
• Discuss with your advisor what to do next.

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What to do when a paper is accepted?

• Be happy and celebrate your accomplishments!
• Plan for final revisions and final submission of
  your paper.
• Make plans for attending the conference and
  presenting your work.

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Act I ask your advisor to attend a conference to
present your paper

• Two roles
• Student
• Advisor
• Work in pairs using the first role you are
  assigned
• We will then switch roles
• We will wrap this up with some discussion

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Prepare for the conference

• Prepare your talk
• Prepare your presentation (powerpoint or pdf)
• Make sure it looks professional (no spelling
  errors, no funny color combinations, no funny
  fonts, large enough fonts)
• Practice your presentation
• In front of a mirror. Time yourself, look at your
  body language.
• To a group of fellow students. Look at them as
  you talk. Learn to understand your audience.
  Learn to answer questions.
• To your advisor
• Have a backup of the talk (memory stick)

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Prepare to interact with researchers

• Prepare your elevator pitch
• Be ready to give a longer more technical
  description of your work
• Be ready to talk about your career plans

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Act II interact with other researchers at the
conference

• Two roles
• Student
• Researcher
• Work in pairs using the first role you are
  assigned
• We will then switch roles
• We will wrap this up with some discussion

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Other professional interactions

• A faculty in an area close to your research is
  visiting your department and giving a talk. What
  shall you do?
• A fresh PhD is interviewing for a faculty opening
  in your department. As part of the interview the
  candidate is giving a talk and meeting with
  graduate students. Shall you attend?

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For more information email gini_at_cs.umn.edu
http//www.cs.umn.edu/gini