I'm back from Asia and can only consider the conference I attended to be a great success. It offered the rare combination of interesting scientific sessions and ample leisure time, my co-workers and I had the chance to hash out new research directions with collaborators from across the globe, and I managed to last two whole weeks with just one carry-on suitcase. My scientific research may never win any awards, but surely I'm a contender for The Golden Luggage Tag.

This latest and eminently enjoyable stop on the conference circuit and last week's blog entry have turned my thoughts to the lighter side of conferences - what it is that keeps us going back to the same meetings, year after year, mildly awkward cocktail reception after mildly awkward cocktail reception, dangly name badge after dangly name badge.

There are the obvious answers, of course, not the least of which is that it is the rare person who would turn their nose up at a paid respite from lab life. (The cynic in me, however, should point out that it is never possible to escape the lab entirely, as the amount of urgent work-related emails one receives is a function of one's distance from the lab. If x is the usual rate of emails that demand an instant and complex reply, Dx(WTF) is what you end up with when away from the lab. D is the aforementioned distance measure, while WTF is a constant quantifying the indecipherability of the foreign-language keyboard in whatever country you find yourself in. )

Apart from the break from the bench, however email-riddled it may be, the obvious appeals to conference-going also include the chance to catch up on new research, to network with like-minded individuals, and to add to one's publication and presentation record, all of which are conducive to furthering one's career.  If furthering one's progression towards metabolic syndrome is also on one's bucket list, the buffets laden with food, drink and ample dessert spreads can't hurt either.

Conferences hold other, smaller pleasures, though. While not enough in themselves to warrant several hundred dollars in registration fees, days away from home and family, and hours cramped in what passes for an airplane these days, these little extras are the icing on the cake, the plugin to the browser, the neutralino to the Standard Model particle.

Chief amongst these pleasures is the chance to sneak out of a dull session to explore whichever exotic destination lies outside the hotel ballroom doors. To the first-time conference goer this may seem like heresy - after all, your PI (principal investigator) wants you to attend all the sessions and provide a detailed report on each talk, right? Wrong. Most PIs will barely notice you've left the lab. If, by chance, they've accompanied you to the conference, the odds of them seeing you leave the conference ballroom are slim, as they've likely already quietly escaped in favour of either dealing with work e-mails back in their room or running up a tab at the hotel bar.

Our entire project team crept out of a ballroom in Bangkok last week to go explore the city's National Science Museum, in fact, and there was no more enthusiastic participant than my PI. At other conferences, I've passed on structural biology sessions to go pet koalas at a zoo outside Brisbane, turned down talks on bacterial metabolic pathways in favour of riding the little boat around the canal that traces the perimeter of Las Vegas' Luxor hotel, and I've timed train rides across Scotland to get to Edinburgh's Whiskey Heritage Centre and back between the end of one session and the beginning of the next.  It is, in my admittedly statistically ill-informed mind, statistically impossible for a conference to consist entirely of interesting material that is directly relevant to you, so consider the less stimulating sessions to be the conference equivalent of a free period. Use them to your advantage and get out and do a bit of sightseeing. Just remember to take your name badge off first.

Conferences also provide an unparalleled opportunity to pick up bags and bags of "swag." Swag refers to free logo-branded promotional materials, and while the etymology of the name supposedly has something to do with a British term for stolen items, it is more popularly seen as some sort of acronym, usually along the lines of "Shit We Always Get."

At the Academy Awards and other swanky events, the so-called "swag bags" contain some very fine loot indeed. Designer watches, vouchers for stays at obscenely expensive exotic resorts, even cars in some cases, but on the science conference circuit, we must make do with items of somewhat lesser stature.

Still, you'd be hard pressed to find any nerd out there who doesn't get at least a little excited by the prospect of a free pen.  Especially sought-after are those with integrated highlighters (verrrrryyyy useful for marking up conference programs and determining where one's sightseeing opportunities lie), though the granddaddy of free pens, at least in the biosciences, is the Eppendorf pipette pen - an ink-dispensing version of their most popular product. I lost mine years ago and have scoured Eppendorf booths since then to find a replacement, to no luck whatsoever.

Next to the pens, t-shirts seem to be the second most popular form of swag. Indeed virtually every scientist knows at least one co-worker whose wardrobe consists almost exclusively of freely-acquired scientific t-shirts. Some of these can be quite good (the Herpes virus conference is known to issue quite good ones, though they are best not worn on a first date), but for most of them it is wise to keep in mind that just because something is free does not make it good.  Rarely are these shirts sized for a female body, and rarely do they come in colours that look good on any healthy skin tone. Remember that the purpose of these shirts is, first and foremost, marketing, and it is their goal to turn you into a human billboard. Think about that before you pull on that bright yellow XXL "MegaCorp:  professionally integrating competitive and interdependent catalysts for change to meet the needs of an ever-changing marketplace" shirt. 

Also, just as one does not wear one's name badge outside conference hall doors, it is equally uncool to wear a free shirt you have just acquired at the same meeting you acquired it at. That's like wearing the band shirt you just bought at the merch table at their own concert. In a sort of inverse corollary to this, however, it is actually kind of cool to wear last year's free conference shirt.  It shows dedication, sort of like how a little threadbare moustache is not cool, but a big moustache is. A big moustache and a conference t-shirt from the first-ever instance of a particular meeting would probably make you the coolest guy there, come to think of it.

I've gone far past the point my editor likes me to, but I must briefly mention that another notable benefit of conferences is that, should you be so inclined, conferences generally provide a good point for embarking upon romantic liaisons. A good editor will of course not cut off his subject when her keyboard turns to sex, so I shall continue.

I know of many scientists who have engaged in at least a little flirting, if not more, at conferences (my journalistic integrity forces me to note that this includes myself, way back at my first-ever conference, held in the appropriately sinful environment that is Las Vegas) . The scope of these dalliances ranges from shy glances across a crowded poster session, to a little suggestive bump on the dance floor at the conference banquet, to rounding all the bases. Most conference romances are short-lived affairs that wouldn't ordinarily happen, but do because "It's okay, after all we'll never see each other again. Except maybe at next year's conference. And the one after that." But for every thousand trysts that end when you toss your name badge in the garbage can on the way out of the convention centre, there are a few that blossom. Two of my colleagues, as a matter of fact, went on to marry their conference loves, and now have little babies. Now THAT is some serious conference swag right there.

Until next week!