I’ve just finished attending an international conference where I presented two papers. What was I thinking? Never again. The amount of preparation for a talk - even a 20-minute talk - is a lot. Weeks of creating the slides and practicing the talk. Nights at home (after getting my 1-year-old daughter to bed), running through the slide deck over and over, coming out of the study occasionally to say hello to my very understanding partner. And I did two of them. Never again.

During the year, my supervisor has been re-iterating the importance of some collaborations we have with a few international research groups. Collaborating with other people in countries far, far away is not easy, even with all the technology available to us. Skyping is not the same a meeting face to face. Out of sight, out of mind. So, an important conference in my field of study/work required abstracts to be submitted in April. One of the collaborations had produced some interesting research, and so an abstract was submitted. I had also been working on some other, related research, and submitted an abstract for that too. Both were accepted. I said I’d do both. Ugh….

The first talk did not feel like it went well. All the practice was somehow forgotten, and I rushed through it a bit too quickly. My colleague (boss) presented straight after me, in the same parallel session, and as usual was really good. Another colleague went after him and was brilliant. Just as well I went first!

The second talk was the following day and seemed to go well. I felt better about it, as the room was smaller, and it was easier to gauge the audience reactions as I could actually see their faces. Got some tricky questions too, so at least some of the audience was actually listening to what I was saying.

After that, I could actually enjoy the conference. I was too busy before my own talks, stressing over them, so when they were done, I was able to relax and take other sessions in.

Now I need to finish off these two papers and get them submitted as soon as possible. The conference has potentially kicked off some new collaborations for our group, which is a really good outcome for a small research group. However, it effectively means I get a lot more work, and I can only handle so many things at once.

So, only ever accept one talk at a conference, even if you have more than one abstract accepted. Unless you are crazy. Or brilliant.