A School outing for Grown-ups

Conferences are a big feature of the academic world, irrespective of the field or discipline. In my mind they serve 3 main purposes, 1) the exchange of knowledge, 2) idea generation, and 3) social exchanges and networking. This past week, the Institute of Psychology at the University of Lausanne hosted the 17th European Conference on Personality. It was a great success.

About a year ago, my thesis director who was appointed chair of the local organizing committee asked me to join the organizing committee - I was honoured by his invitation and happy to say yes, I knew that being part of the committee would be an excellent experience. I helped with numerous tasks including fundraising, publicity, preparing 500 conference bags and coordinating with our keynote speakers. My main task was to recruit and prepare our team of 20 + volunteers,  schedule their activities and be responsible for them during the conference. I also took the initiative to organize an event for young researchers at the conference - a lunch time session on publishing with the editorial board of the European Journal of Psychology, a prestigious journal in our field.

We had just over 500 participants for the conference, 7 keynote addresses, 11 invited symposiums, 30 regular symposiums, 24 paper sessions and 2 poster sessions. This represents more than 280 individual pieces of academic work (not including all the posters!). The conference program also included a number of tourism activities and social activities during the conference - a welcome reception with food and live music, two apéros coinciding with the poster sessions, and a fantastic conference dinner aboard a boat on the lake - wow. As one of the conference participants described it, "it is like a school outing for grown-ups"!

From an organization perspective, the conference went so smoothly - of course we had a few minor glitches along the way, but these were all addressed quickly and professionally. The team were fantastic and were all engaged, competent and ready to help. There was a great atmosphere during the conference and up until now, we have only received positive feedback. The quality of the work presented was high, the developments in the field impressive and I have no doubt that this conference has generated many new ideas and connections between people.

For me personally and professionally, this conference was a key event. I learnt so much by being on the committee - from conference organization, to logistics at the University, to academic politics, to leading a team, all made that more interesting because a lot of it took place in French. I found myself switching between English and French during the preparation phases and during the conference depending on who I was speaking to. I was very intentional about networking at this conference and most of my lunch and coffee breaks consisted of meetings with key people which I know will lead to many good future collaborations. I was so impressed by how willing these senior people and professors were to meet with me and share their knowledge and the way they were so encouraging of me and extended such kindness - I most definitely want to be that type of person.

Although tired after a full and intense week, I feel energized, ready to tackle the final stages of my PhD with creativity, academic rigor and persistence. I am excited about the future possibilities, and so grateful be doing something that is so personally satisfying - I look forward to seeing how it will develop and become a source of good for others too.