Since you guys seemed to like my last travel
blog when I went to ASHG in Vancouver,
I am actually traveling to another conference today.
I am going to the American Heart Association in New Orleans
so I figured I would try and blog this conference, too.
I'm going to do a little differently.
I'm going to try and do it real blogging style to you
on the phone this whole time because I
don't have a vlogging camera so we're going to see how it goes.
So I'm actually a lot more nervous about this conference
than I was about the last one.
Because at the last one I was presenting a poster.
And that's fine, you make a poster,
you go stand by the poster, and you talk to some people
who come up and that's OK.
But this time I submitted an abstract for this conference
and I clicked--
because they give you a selection--
do you want to present a poster or do
you want to do a poster or a presentation?
And so I clicked poster only-- and I've
been telling this to every single person
that I've talked to recently about this conference--
but I clicked poster only.
I know that I clicked the poster only.
I went back and I looked and they gave me a talk.
So I was not thinking that this project was
ready for a talk, especially not to talk to a meeting that
draws 18,000 people.
Now, admittedly, the room that I'm going to be in
is going to have maybe 100 people.
I don't know, I'm hoping it only has 100 people,
but it's a session at a gigantic cardiology conference
and I haven't done anything like that before.
So I'm not worried about the talk itself that much.
I'm worried about the five minutes of questions
after my 10 minute talk.
We will see how it goes.
Well Day 1 was tiring.
Conferences are exhausting.
And I feel like I had 40 things that when I was walking around
today I was like, I'm going to vlog that to the camera
but now my brain is just mush.
This is definitely a very different conference
in that it's doctors and not scientists.
And so I was joking this morning about how I'm so professionally
dressed but then I showed up and everybody was in suits
and I was like, OK no I'm not.
But there were the usual things, there
were tons of talks in the exhibit hall
and a terrifying dummy thing.
I guess it's for CPR but it's horrifying.
I will say this exhibit hall is super different.
I'm used to really liking the exhibit halls
because I walk around and it's vendors for lab stuff
and I'm like, oh yeah I'd love to try your new pipette,
let me try your new pipette, this is awesome, pipetting.
But this one was like companies advertising drugs
to doctors which was really weird, it was super weird.
I guess it makes sense that this is a cardiologist thing and not
a scientist thing, but strange.
I went to talks and I went to a poster session
and I snuck a peek at the room I'm
going to be talking in tomorrow and maybe it
fits 80 to 100 people.
So it's not the worst.
But now I'm back in the hotel room
and I have to go for dinner with my lab soon, which is exciting
and we're in New Orleans and that's going to be exciting.
But mostly I'm just panicking about my talk
and so instead of going out and grabbing drinks with everyone
before dinner, I'm sitting here and nervously practicing
my talk.
Just practicing and practicing.
Today's the day.
I skipped most of the morning talks
because I stayed in and continued to practice my talk,
but it's today.
So after freaking out all day and going on a walk
to try and stop myself from freaking out, and then freaking
out in the room before the talk, and then not hearing
any of the talks that went before me because I
was so nervous, my talk actually went OK, I think.
So we're actually creating sort of a molecular benefit
here in these cells.
Some of my lab came out to support me
which was really nice.
And I actually was a little disappointed.
The part I had been most worried about
was the Q&A session afterwards.
Because that's always scary if somebody asks a mean question
and doesn't think you did something right.
But what ended up happening is that I actually
got very few questions.
I got questions from only the moderators of the panel
and they asked very clinically-focused questions
which makes some sense of the stuff that I was presenting,
but there are a couple very critical questions that I get
every time I present this research and they're totally
warranted questions but nobody even brought those up and so I
was--
it's good.
Just whenever I don't get questions
I worry that maybe I didn't explain it well enough
for people to understand it enough to actually
ask me questions.
So really of course, this is just
me freaking out over things as always.
But then post-talk we had a lab dinner to celebrate
and we went out and found some music and had some drinks.
So that was really nice.
And then this morning I was so tired, but I got up
and I went to another talk by somebody else in my lab
and then I walked around the conference a little bit,
I went to a rapid fire session, I went to the posters.
I actually talked to somebody at a poster
that I was really, really interested in
and so that was great, and I got her card,
and so I'm going to email her because her research is very
similar to my research in an interesting way
and so hopefully I have made a good connection there.
So that was good.
And then about that time it was early afternoon,
and my flight is at 6:30 and I was just so tired.
Conferences are exhausting and so
I decided to wander around New Orleans a little bit.
I went Jackson Square and treated myself to some beignets
from Cafe du Monde and then I wandered around a little bit.
And then finally was just carrying
my shoulder bag and my suitcase and was wandering New Orleans
and decided it was time to come back to the airport.
So all in all, I would say this was a successful conference.
I went to some interesting talks which was good.
I got in some good lab bonding which
I think is an important part of conferencing.
And I gave my very first conference
talk which was terrifying, but it's over now
and I can say that I've given a talk at a conference.
And I maybe made a good connection at a poster session.
So I think that's a pretty good conference goal list completed.
Go forth and do science.