My first conference was the BPS (British Psychological Society) Developmental Psychology annual conference 2010, which happened in September 2010.
There I presented my first conference poster ever.
It was a very rewarding experience for me, and I felt very happy and content with my work and a tiny sense of achievement there.
Although it wasn't a big conference, I was content with it as my first time conference. :)
This time, the biennial conference at SRCD was HUGE!!!!
It's probably the largest conference in the field of child development research.
Each day there were 5 poster sessions with about 250 posters exhibiting at each session, and simultaneously there were also 5 sessions of symposiums, talks or discussion (about 40 at each session) going on at the same time. It was amazing- slightly overwhelming, but absolutely fantastic. I felt like my brain was fried and my energy was completely drained at the end of each day during the conference. However, it was a wonderful feeling.
I only presented one poster there, which is not a big achievement, but I do think presenting a poster is the quickest way to get your research noticed., as there would be more people coming and you would have more opportunity of being "seen".
I was very happy to meet many people in similar research field. It really feels encouraging to me that I am not alone. And I was ever so slightly scared of being asked some tricky questions or criticism, but nothing of that sort happened. On the contrary, I met many people who are interested in my work, we had interesting discussion, and I got encouraging comments.
I even met my undergraduate lecturer for Developmental psychology at the conference.
She didn't even know that I was her student until I dared to introduce myself to her.
She was happy to meet her previous student and we even spent an afternoon walking around Old Town Montreal together after the conference. :)
It was a magical time. I really got a lot out of it, and I'm definitely very grateful to people who help to make my trip possible, and to my lovely (and intellectually stimulating) company.
Thank you my lovely ladies! You are the best. :)
