Conferencemaxxing: How to grow your profile and network as a scientist

for thanks for the intro, Eric. Yeah.

Um, so yeah, I called this title conference maxing, which is a little bit of an irreverent name, but really the point of this is it's going to be about not just how to network at conferences,

but also the other things that you can do to self-promote as a researcher because I do think it's really a holistic thing that all fits together.

So, how do you network successfully? Uh

at first like to think about this I asked a few of my other friends who are strong networkers and the answers that I got were a little bit tough because really it's just like a personality

thing like some for some people this really comes naturally. Um the idea of this

naturally. Um the idea of this presentation though is that we're not going to talk about just how to network through jobs. Uh but we're going to talk about like building your

own profile, finding friends, which is really the most important integral part and specifically the things about conferences in the scientific community where like finding friends is like a

little different than how you do it normally. Um how to spend time at a

normally. Um how to spend time at a conference effectively to maximize these sorts of things. And I'm going to talk about these things not in like a cynical way. Sometimes it's going to sound like

way. Sometimes it's going to sound like I'm a little bit cynical uh the way that I'm saying like, "Oh, your friends give you opportunities, but I'm not I'm not thinking about these in cynical terms. I'm just trying to explain why different

things that I've done like have helped me out, I think." So, first we're going to talk about sort of the philosophy and mindset uh that you can approach this stuff with. Then we'll talk about

stuff with. Then we'll talk about building profile, what the sort of the anatomy of a good conversation is and then like what you should do at a conference to uh make the

most out of your time. So first what is the mindset that you should have? Why am

I giving a presentation where a lot of what I talk about is how to make friends. So first like we'll talk about

friends. So first like we'll talk about why it matters. And once again like you know I don't want to sound too uh cynical here but you really get a lot out of networking.

So, I'll be putting a little bit of like folksy things that I heard from my parents. And one that my dad loves to

parents. And one that my dad loves to say is it's better to be lucky than good. What does this mean? Well, anyone

good. What does this mean? Well, anyone

can become good at a skill, but luck is rare. And often luck can make a really

rare. And often luck can make a really big difference. And where does luck come

big difference. And where does luck come from? Luck comes from other people. Your

from? Luck comes from other people. Your

friends will want to help you out, and they're going to want to give out opportunities when they hear about them.

I could say firsthand that I've had some incredibly lucky things uh where it has come from having close friends who want to advocate for you and from you know sort of being in the right place at the

right time. So it's really like it's not

right time. So it's really like it's not just something that's fulfilling and fun but it is really important to like build up your connections in the community if you can.

And also befriending your peers specifically is important. So, another

piece of folksy family wisdom is that when my sister and I would fight as kids, my mom would always say, "Your sister's going to be your friend forever." What does this mean? Well, as

forever." What does this mean? Well, as

your life circumstances change and you get older, your friends are going to fall away. Like, your best friend in

fall away. Like, your best friend in middle school isn't going to your same high school. Your best friend at high

high school. Your best friend at high school isn't going to your university.

People are going to join different companies and fall away. But the ironic thing is that your research friends are kind of going to stick around for much longer in your life because your life circumstances are moving in parallel.

Like we're all going to continue to publish at conferences. People are going to become faculty at different places.

You know, you might be at a company and then your friend is a faculty and you can go to them to find an intern, for example. So the connections that you

example. So the connections that you make at conferences really can be like a lifelong or at least a careerlong thing.

So, it really is important to make friends, but also befriending your peers is fun.

I I think this is kind of obvious. Uh

you're going to enjoy your conference more uh if you're meeting new people.

And really, there's a lot of great people out there uh to befriend. So,

what philosophy uh do I like after introspecting and talking to some of my other friends about this topic like what do we think about conversations?

So, first, like, what should your goal be when you're having a conversation with someone? So, here are some bad

with someone? So, here are some bad answers. Like, you should not go up and

answers. Like, you should not go up and talk to someone just because you want them to introduce you to someone else.

This is incredibly annoying. So, like at conferences, I've had people come up, you know, while I'm talking to someone else and like come in to introduce themselves and just immediately go like, "Oh, hi, Michael. I work on this, this,

this, and I'm going to be applying for PhDs. Like, do you know uh like how how

PhDs. Like, do you know uh like how how can I talk to William? like do you think is William taking his and it's like that's incredibly annoying because it feels like they're just trying to use me

you know and maybe in another context like if they were already my friend then I would be happy to advocate for them but you can't you know come in and and expect these sorts of things so you really have to be careful to not come

off as having some agenda a good answer is just that you want to get to know someone you want to have fun having good conversations or if you want feedback on ideas so similarly like How should you

think about your social media presence?

I don't think that there are really bad answers here. Like it's a good answer to

answers here. Like it's a good answer to want more visibility for your work and to want more name recognition. But I

think great answers to this are that you want visibility for your ideas and that you want to get to know people like extra online. And I think that

extra online. And I think that philosophy has really taken me very far too. Another bit of mindset thing that I

too. Another bit of mindset thing that I think uh more junior like students really have to break out of is like what does it mean to like respect your elders? So if you're at a conference and

elders? So if you're at a conference and you're talking like like suppose you're at a conference and you see I don't know you see like Jeff Hinton right like standing there how are you if if you get

a chance to talk to him like what are you going to do? Are you going to give him some special treatment? Maybe a

little bit but mostly I think the answer is no. This is not there's no teacher

is no. This is not there's no teacher student dynamic going on in the research community. Everyone is peers. Even the

community. Everyone is peers. Even the

most senior people are actually your peers. Like we're all in this together

peers. Like we're all in this together working on science. I think the real way to respect a senior folk is not to like annoy them or or you know worship them or treat them as an idol. Just treat

them as a person. So really you should try as much as you can to break out of this mindset. you know the mindset shift

this mindset. you know the mindset shift that you have to have to stop calling your advisor professor and to start you know calling them their first name like approaching approaching these people

like peers is going to really help and then the last like mindset thing that I think uh really you should think about uh and take into your approach to networking and chats and stuff is like

who who are you as a scientist like what is your value ad it's never too early to think about this so like what what is your value ad there's a lot of different value ads you could have to the community. So research is obviously like

community. So research is obviously like the primary component that all of our value ads are. Uh but there are other like big things that you can provide for other people. So like what are holistic

other people. So like what are holistic ways that you can contribute to the community? One piece of value can be

community? One piece of value can be advocacy like advocating for things you believe in. An example that I had was

believe in. An example that I had was being really involved in advocating to get rid of the ACL anonymity deadline thing.

Also connecting people is a value. You

could be valued for how you know you made connections between two friends that you had who work on a similar thing and you introduce them to each other like that is helping the entire

enterprise of science by you know building better interchange and exchange of ideas and I think that's a big part of the value that faculty provide also good critique is value. So all of these

things are things that you can deliver outside of the context of just your research. And these are all things that

research. And these are all things that you can keep in mind when you approach your online presence. So that's kind of the next part that I'm going to talk about here is building your profile and

your presence online. Um because it does really make networking and making friends a lot easier. When Eric is talking about this, you know, a lot of people coming up and knowing me at a conference, this is really a big part of

why. So why does this matter? your

why. So why does this matter? your

online profile is the first impression that people are going to have of you or it can be. So, I've gotten a lot out of having this high visibility. Um, in the first year, William told me I was

tweeting too much. Uh, I'm glad that I ignored this advice. Um, because people really don't remember why they know you or how they know you if they know you from online. They just recognize your

from online. They just recognize your name and they won't remember really unless it was really bad if you posted something annoying. they'll just think,

something annoying. they'll just think, you know, do I know you from somewhere?

So, I've actually had this experience where uh more where some senior folks who will go unnamed just saw me standing at a table with my badge out and came up to me and was like, "Do I know you from

somewhere?" And I knew this was also a

somewhere?" And I knew this was also a very vocal person on Twitter and we had a like nice conversation. They literally

approached me because of Twitter. And

I've done this to other people and made great friends. Um, so this ties into

great friends. Um, so this ties into like another piece of advice, funny advice that I heard uh from my dad that I'll share with you. So my dad was in the Air Force and there's a lot of like funny things about military culture that

come up. And one story that he had for

come up. And one story that he had for me was this idea of the wedge. So what

is the wedge? Basically, when you're inside of this big organization with a hierarchy, the worst thing you can do is have a goof up and break something or mess something up. You know, land your

airplane too hard and you break the landing gear or something. So, you know, let's suppose I do that. I land a little too hard and break the landing gear. You

know, my commander is going to be like, "That [ __ ] Saxon was an idiot. He

landed too fast and broke his airplane.

What a moron." Um, and it's really a bummer because I'm on the bottom of the hierarchy. But the thing is is all you

hierarchy. But the thing is is all you have to do is wait for someone else to come along and make a worse mess up and wedge under you. And when they do that, the entire stack gets lifted up. So, you

know, give it a few months and the next person does some different uh mess up.

Maybe he I don't know. I'm I don't know what it's like to be a pilot, so I can't really think of other examples. But

suppose someone I don't know, they break off an antenna or something. Like, use

your imagination. Then they might be, well, this guy was the one who messed up. Give it a few more times and the

up. Give it a few more times and the stack moves up and eventually the commander is not going to go, "Saxon, that idiot. He landed too hard." He's

that idiot. He landed too hard." He's

going to go, "Saxon, I don't know. Uh,

what did he do again?" but I've heard his name. Must be a good guy. That's the

his name. Must be a good guy. That's the

punchline of that joke. So, what's the takeaway for networking? Really, you

should not be afraid to post because unless you really say or do something bad, you're not going to be remembered for saying something dumb. People are

just going to remember that they know you because inevitably someone else is going to wedge under and say something dumber than whatever thing you're embarrassed about, and it's not going to matter in the end. So really the bias

that most of us should have is to be present and to be authentic. And for

almost all of you this advice does not apply to me but for almost everyone else the advice really should be like you should be posting more than you are. So

I have come up with this like as I was introspecting about like what sort of authenticity do I have and what sort of things do I post I came up with this idea of like the posting compass. So

everything that you put out online can be either high effort or loweffort and it can be serious or unserious. So

serious things can go all the way from like research papers to just hot takes.

Um and then there's kind of middle effort things on either side like uh or sorry middle seriousness things like a blog post about your personal life instead of one about research or just a

joke like loweffort joke about research.

Then there's less serious things like investing effort in making your website look nice and then like super unserious things like a joke paper or like a [ __ ]

post. So I'm going to give examples of

post. So I'm going to give examples of kind of each thing that I've done just for illustrative purpose and I'll talk about what I think uh the impact has had on other people was. So obviously the

high effort high seriousness thing is to publish your papers. We all are aiming to build our profile through doing this.

But what's a high effort other high serious thing is like research blogs. So

really if you can create a quality research blog that's authentically you that adds a lot of value. So when I made a post about column I didn't just talk

about oh the column was so good and there were all these papers. I thought

about like what are my topics that I'm trying to focus on right now and I picked out some papers that I liked and just wrote about those. And I wrote about the personal insights that I got from the paper. I didn't just summarize

them and this really got a lot of traction. So here's the map of like

traction. So here's the map of like visitors to my website and the week that I posted that up I got a thousand page views to my website and like 800 people looked at my website. So you can really get a lot of visibility by putting out

these sorts of quality things and it will help build your brand and your profile and you'll establish yourself as someone who's an expert in your area.

Then there's sort of loweffort, high seriousness things which are hot takes which if you don't know a hot take is just like sharing your opinion without thinking much and maybe putting your

opinion in an incendiary way. So like I I post a lot of hot takes. I'm sure all of you are aware. So I post meta hot takes where I talk about the community and you know complaint recently I was

complaining about people putting too much math in their papers or like talking just a hot take like just some random thought that occurs to me about research where I was thinking about

hallucinations versus human mistakes. I

just post that without really worrying like how correct is it like it because I'm just starting a conversation and then people will engage and I can argue with them and it's fun or you know all

outs. So I found that that definition of

outs. So I found that that definition of AGI paper had like fake hallucinated citations that weren't real. So I made a post about it and you know it got a lot of attention and I felt like it was a

legitimate thing to put out. Now you

should be careful about starting fights.

Like I'm not encouraging all of you to start fights. I'm just giving as an

start fights. I'm just giving as an example like how I started a fight that I thought was authentic and I think it was uh good for me. Um, then there's

like loweffort, high serious posts, which I would argue is mainly like posting updates about your research. So

saying, "Oh, here's my paper. Come talk

to me. We all know how to do that, so I'm not going to worry too much about describing it." Then there's like mid

describing it." Then there's like mid high effort, midseriousness things are like investing in the design of your website. So a year ago, this is what my

website. So a year ago, this is what my website looked like when I put up this post. And then I kind of got addicted to

post. And then I kind of got addicted to playing around in cursor and like editing the layout and style of my website. And now this is what it looks

website. And now this is what it looks like. And I think um I get a lot more

like. And I think um I get a lot more dwell time on it now because people like to look at something that looks nice. Uh

and this doesn't just apply to your website. This applies to like when you

website. This applies to like when you make a poster. This applies to when you make a little promo thing for your paper. Like you should really think

paper. Like you should really think about making things look nice. Uh this

also applies like when you're posting a thread or when you're making a figure.

Really you can a lot of us should be thinking more about making stuff that looks nice than we currently are.

Then there's mid-effort, low seriousness, but high cost things. Uh,

at EMNLP, um, this was really a hit where I made these like joke stickers of a acceptable reviewer award and handed them out and a lot of people were coming up and asking me for these. Uh, and I

got this idea from this guy at Iclear in Rwanda where he submitted a paper about like a really efficient uh, he was doing like one of those speedrun things where he had a really efficient code that

could train a model to like high accuracy on um, I want to say like scar 10 or something or like image probably notet but he could train it really fast with high accuracy and it all fit in

like four lines of code but it got rejected. So, in protest, he made a

rejected. So, in protest, he made a sticker that was the shape of the bottom of your badge where he had the entire code for it printed out and he was just giving it out. He was like, "Hey, you want this sticker? Put it on your badge.

This is a piece of code that gets to like 90% accuracy in five minutes or whatever." And it was pretty funny. So,

whatever." And it was pretty funny. So,

giving out little handouts is like a higher effort thing, but you know, all of these things together, if you just have fun with it, you know, people appreciate these things. And these are the ways that I sort of built a profile.

And once again, I didn't do these things with building a profile in mind, but just by having fun, uh, it's really paid dividends. So then another like

dividends. So then another like loweffort, mid-seriousness thing would be just posting, not really hot takes, but posting about ideas in your area. So

boost other people's papers from people you don't know well and maybe put out what your thoughts are on that paper.

Um, and by doing this, you're both helping, you know, add value to the community by disseminating ideas, but you're also establishing yourself as an expert in your area because now people are going to think, I should come to

Michael if I'm thinking about some of these topics like multilinguality or evaluation. And if you have this

evaluation. And if you have this consistent brand of the sorts of opinions that you share and they're authentic to you, you can really get far with um, you know, people appreciating

those things. Um, so I found that I've

those things. Um, so I found that I've gotten quite a bit out of that. Then

another like loweffort like mid-seriousness type of post that I put out is relevant up life updates. So what

do I mean by that? Something like

posting about the conference with a picture. These are just things that once

picture. These are just things that once again, you know, people think are fun. I

don't know, people people like them. I

like seeing that people are having fun.

I like seeing the picture of the NLP group at a conference. And, you know, once again, it just sort of puts you like on people's minds. So, I just like to have fun with it. You know, I've done different little joke things, uh,

talking about, you know, giving a life update that ties into your research, like, oh, you know, I'm going to be giving this presentation and give it some flavor. You know, say, oh, I'm on

some flavor. You know, say, oh, I'm on this, you know, I'm on my flight right now, uh, hurdling towards Amherst, blah, blah, blah. You know, just, you know, be

blah, blah. You know, just, you know, be creative with the way that you talk about things. um you know, you can

about things. um you know, you can implicitly, you know, share your travel photos, but also convey like what you're up to on that. So, this was when I was on my way up to Seattle and I posted, I'm coming up to Seattle for the summer

for my internship. Anyone who wants to talk, let's hang out and I posted, you know, like like I I documented that as I was coming up. So, then loweffort, low seriousness. This is [ __ ] posts and

seriousness. This is [ __ ] posts and memes. So, just posting little jokes,

memes. So, just posting little jokes, things that are timely, things that are relevant. Um,

relevant. Um, these are always fun to do. So, you

should have a mix of all of these things. Like, you can't just be a

things. Like, you can't just be a jokester. That's going to turn you into

jokester. That's going to turn you into one of those like annoying effective accelerationism anons. Like,

people don't like those. But having a bit of this mixed in can be a fun thing for people that people like. And you can also combine these things together. So,

like you can make a [ __ ] post about your own paper. uh or like have a hot take

own paper. uh or like have a hot take that is relevant to what's going on or you know a meme that's also a life update where it's like oh I'm working on this older leaf paper here's a meme

about how it feels seeing William's little circle pop up while I'm still editing it. So what are the sort of like

editing it. So what are the sort of like overriding principles that I'm thinking about when I talk about this? Well, the

first is like you should really like have authentic opinions and don't be afraid to share them. When you put something out that's authentic to how you feel about things and what your perspective is, no matter how

seriousness or unserious and high effort or low effort it is, it's going to reflect that. And so people are getting

reflect that. And so people are getting to know you through that, even if it's not, you know, something super serious.

And I think people appreciate a little bit of unseriousness because it makes you seem less um threatening, less imposing. I don't know what the right

imposing. I don't know what the right word is, but people care about the people they know, and this is a route that people get to knowing you. So, I'm

really serious about this. Like, almost

any authentic visibility is good. As

long as you're not an [ __ ] Even if you say something that's incorrect, even if you say something you change your mind on, it doesn't matter. Like, you

just really should probably be less afraid to speak up than you are.

That being said, you do still need to add value. So, you know, to loop back

add value. So, you know, to loop back like what is the value of some of these things? The value of posting your

things? The value of posting your perspectives on other people's work is curation. So, people appreciate learning

curation. So, people appreciate learning about work that they might be interested in that they wouldn't see otherwise. Um,

and if they get a habit of coming to you for perspectives on your area and your work is relevant, that's going to pay off when it comes time to share your own things.

So you should try to be like a mini version of those like people who you know post the hottest archive daily paper without reading them. You can be a good version of that. They also they always start off as the good version of

that where they're posting papers they're interested in with insights and then eventually they get enough followers where it just turns into posting you know posting the hype thing

with just the abstract and no blurb. Um

you can just be the startout version of that and never turn into the loweffort version. So when there's a paper that

version. So when there's a paper that you appreciate, come up with the authentic insight that you took away from it and post that along with the link. So critique is also a type of

link. So critique is also a type of value. A fair criticism of ideas moves

value. A fair criticism of ideas moves the conversation forward. If there's

something you don't like and you think you have a valid reason to don't like to to dislike it, just go ahead and post it. You're starting a conversation and

it. You're starting a conversation and that's a that is a legitimate bit of value that you can provide. And you know they there is this thing about how social media rewards negativity. I think

if you can give a little bit of productive negativity into the world from time to time uh you'll be rewarded for it and you'll also not be doing a bad thing. But of course you have to be

bad thing. But of course you have to be careful to not just be you know become like Gary Marcus like you you have to have some things that you that you are positive about. But it it's still um you

positive about. But it it's still um you know it's good to put out a little bit of negativity. Like you shouldn't be

of negativity. Like you shouldn't be afraid to do that. Okay. So that's

enough about your social media uh output. Now I'm going to talk about uh

output. Now I'm going to talk about uh how to talk to people at conferences and how this sort of leads to making friends. So first you know people might

friends. So first you know people might approach you. Um this is maybe after

approach you. Um this is maybe after you've like successfully done the stuff in part three. Um but you know as you also just as your work gets seen and appreciated people are going to like it.

Like I know at column there were a lot of people who wanted to talk to Deepo about uh his ML gym paper and you know that sort of stuff really helps. Um and

this is coming from your profile and visibility rising but it's also coming from people appreciating your work. So

you can sort of do the flip side of that where you can talk to new people you want to meet uh about their work. Um so

when you're talking to someone new, we should ask about their work. You

shouldn't just immediately start like talking about your work. Um because

people um you know it's not really a good this is something obvious I think to most people but it's not a good conversational etiquette uh to force someone to talk about something you don't care about. And if they do ask you

need to be ready to say like something short and to the point about your work.

So a rule of a good rule of thumb is like can you think of a one-s sentence description just of the what and then sort of a 30- secondond like summary like your elevator pitch that you would

give about like you know this is what we did and this is what we learned.

So also people like to be authentically complimented. So, especially if you're

complimented. So, especially if you're talking to like a new junior person, which I submit you should mainly be doing, talking to like your peers who are at a similar career stage as you,

um, you should compliment them. So, you

should talk to them about how like if you know them from the internet or you know them from their work, like it's good to say, you know, I really liked this paper from you, blah, blah, blah.

What are you working on now? That's a

great conversation starter. And once

they start talking about what they're working on now, you can loop in like the conversation about what you're doing, too. You can say, "Oh, yeah. I really

too. You can say, "Oh, yeah. I really

thought of that like from you know this ties into something from my paper where we learned blah blah blah and you can have really great conversations like that with people. Um

so one thing that you should kind of avoid is cliched topics. So it's valid to ask someone like as an icebreaker how are you enjoying the conference? Uh but

it's a little bit boring.

So, can you think of like a conversation starter uh or a good question that's canned but you can just save and like use on a lot of people that's relevant uh and and interesting. So, I really

hate the meme of people talking about P Doom, which is the like safety people's idea of like what's the probability that we're going to all be killed by AI, but this is like a legitimate canned

conversation starter in that community that works really well where like if two people who are concerned about AI safety meet each other, they can just start a conversation with, oh, what's your P Doom? And they'll immediately like get

Doom? And they'll immediately like get into and and have like they can have an interesting conversation about why. So

like can you think of a version of that that's like relevant to your interests or your work and if you can bring it up like it can be something recent um you know it can be like do you think scaling

is going to keep working? Do you think RLHF is good? You know you can ask questions like that. Ask people for their opinions and see where it goes. So

I had one that I was using at like ACL 2023 where I would ask people like what's something you're sick of seeing?

Like what do you wish people didn't publish? that's authentic to me because

publish? that's authentic to me because I'm a little bit of a sour, negative, uh, cynical guy. Um, and you shouldn't do it if this isn't authentic to you.

But whatever's something that you could also talk about easily is a good place to start as like a canned icebreaker opening line. Um, and especially when

opening line. Um, and especially when you're talking to senior folks, you should let them have a break from talking about research and talk to them about like random nonsense. Uh, so this

ties into just how to talk to new people in general. So going back to this

in general. So going back to this principle of like what should your agenda be when you talk to someone? Uh

your goal should just be to have a good conversation. You know, you shouldn't be

conversation. You know, you shouldn't be trying to get anything out of it. And

friends come from having like an authentic connection to someone. So like

what are your mutual connections? It can

be common friends. It can be common interests which you're already at a huge advantage at a conference because you know everyone's interested in research and you can use random things you know about them. So, like a funny uh

about them. So, like a funny uh conversation that I had a couple years ago at a conference was when I talked to Chris Manning for the first time and I knew he was from Australia. So, I asked him like, "Is Australian wildlife really

that deadly? Or do Australians just like

that deadly? Or do Australians just like to make everyone think it's dangerous?"

And then we had a great conversation where he was talking about when he was a kid like, "Oh, this spider like this huntsman spider is really big, but it's not actually dangerous." Like, you can get people talking about something that's unrelated to research and just

have a good exchange. And like I don't think he remembers that or anything, but it's more the principle that you can have a really good conversation with someone about some nonsense that's unrelated. And a great place to start is

unrelated. And a great place to start is something about like where they're from.

You can ask where are you from? If you

know something about the place, it can be good. I've accumulated enough

be good. I've accumulated enough knowledge about India and China that I can ask people like what state are you from and maybe like be able to say something interesting. So that's a good

something interesting. So that's a good thing to ask people about. Um just all sort of things to keep around. Uh, also

you can scaffold connections off of your friends. So, it's really helpful to hang

friends. So, it's really helpful to hang out in like a small group of people you know and then actively call in others.

You don't want to stand around in a big circle that's just all UCSB people, let's say, or like all of your existing friends. Uh, but it's good to have like

friends. Uh, but it's good to have like a small group of friends and like tag team a poster session or a social. If

you walk around with one or two of your friends and you have enough of a disjoint set of people you know, you can really get far with just introducing each other to the people you know. So

introduce your small group of people to the people you know and vice versa and it will really grow your network fast.

So another one, sorry guys, is English.

So really a heristic you should have is that you should be speaking English almost the entire time you're in the conference. So, like at a poster

conference. So, like at a poster session, if you're talking to the people at the poster in a language other than English, that's going to scare people off from coming to join the conversation and you're going to miss out on connections you could have. Now, I know

this is hard because some presenters are going to be like less confident in English than you are, and they might want to talk to you in their language.

Like this is okay uh if it's oneonone, but something I would suggest doing is if someone else comes by and looks at the poster, you can basically offer them you can offer the person at the poster

just by saying to the person you're already talking to, maybe we should talk about this in English. Uh the other person who walks by might really appreciate that and then they would join the conversation and it would leave a

good impression of you on them. Um so

that's just a little tip to have. Um and

then what should you do after you have a conversation? Um, one thing is you

conversation? Um, one thing is you should have a grace, you should be ready to like make a graceful exit. So like if you're talking to someone and like they don't seem very interested, some strategies like to end it is you can be

like, "Oh, you know, uh, I don't want to take too much of your time, blah, blah, blah." That gives them a way to politely

blah." That gives them a way to politely leave. Um, or you know, if you need to

leave. Um, or you know, if you need to leave, you can also obviously you can just apologize and say like, "Oh, you know, I need to go here." Uh, but you know, be ready to gracefully exit. Um,

and another uh thing that I always you or I used to always do this, I don't do it as much now, is when I end a conversation, treat Twitter as a rolodex. So, if you don't know what a

rolodex. So, if you don't know what a rolodex is, that's this old uh thing that people would use to store business cards where everyone you met, you would put their business card in your rolodex and like sort it by name so you could

scroll through and find like the person's phone number who you made a connection with. I treat Twitter as a

connection with. I treat Twitter as a rolodex. So when I end a conversation

rolodex. So when I end a conversation with someone new who I met, I literally would pull out my phone and say, "Hey, do you have a Twitter and they would give me their handle and I would go follow them right away and then you've

built that connection." So if you want to talk to this person again, it's an easy way to find them and also like you you mutually follow each other and you can do the same thing with LinkedIn or Blue Sky or whatever. Um, but I think

whatever the you know, Twitter is the place to do it right now because it's the dominant posting platform. Okay. So,

finally, I'm going to talk about sort of concrete strategies uh that you should do while you're at the conference. So,

first before you arrive, um you should identify targets uh for conversations like who do you want to talk to? Uh have

you seen any papers that look cool? If

you have, what are the first authors and people at your career stage who are going to be at Nurips who you would like to chat with? If you send an email to like a current PhD student or a posttock, they're pretty likely to

actually respond like especially if you say hey I liked this paper that you wrote um and you know are you going to nurse I'd love to talk. People respond

really positively to that and that can be a great way to make a connection with someone especially someone who's already in like your area. Um and also identify the papers that are going to be in the poster sessions that you want to see.

This is probably the pretty obvious, but just something to say if you've seen papers that look cool or if your friends tell you about papers that look cool, uh, you know, you should definitely go see that poster because talking to the person at the poster is a concrete way

to start a conversation. So, you should prepare your elevator pitch. So, here's

like examples of elevator pitches that I had when I was doing my like multilingual and multimodal work. So my

one-s sentence poster like like elevator pitch was just I work on multilingual multimodal evaluation and people already know what that is and they can like ask questions about it if they're interested. And then the 30 secondond

interested. And then the 30 secondond version of that like the elevator pitch was basically I would say okay I looked at how text image models work in different languages. uh we made an

different languages. uh we made an automatic benchmark generator that could collect uh parallel translations of terms in several languages including like English, Chinese, Spanish, generate the pictures and then have metrics to

find failures and collisions. And the

interesting thing we found was that there were actually biases uh that were differentially expressed between languages where like the model was more sexist in Spanish or Japanese than English or German. But also uh they

naturally memorized cultural knowledge in the prototypical uh examples of things they generated like generating pictures of Indian versus Western.

So that's a good pitch because it gives you the like some of the what some of the how and some of the like like what you learned. And there's also a lot of

you learned. And there's also a lot of different anchors in that elevator pitch that different people can like hook on to. So some people might be like, "Oh,

to. So some people might be like, "Oh, you said you made an automatic benchmark generator. Like can you tell me more

generator. Like can you tell me more about that?" And then I can go about

about that?" And then I can go about like, "Oh, well dynamic benchmarks are better than static benchmarks and we found this, this, this, and this was the thing that didn't work." Blah, blah, blah. Other people might be like, "Oh,

blah. Other people might be like, "Oh, that bias sounds really interesting.

Like what else did you find?" And then I could talk about, well, we actually found that there's a trade-off between biases, like the sexism bias, and then the like memorization of authentic cultural knowledge, blah, blah, blah.

And the idea is like a really good elevator pitch should leave you with many different directions to like move out of. Um, and that's going to be make

out of. Um, and that's going to be make it more likely that the person you're talking to like will, you know, have a conversation about it. Um now obviously like this is all advanced level stuff but you could also think about different

elevator pitches that you would give to different people. Uh so like oh if I

different people. Uh so like oh if I know that this is a person at like a big company like what is this thing in my work that's relevant to Gemini versus like oh what's the thing that's relevant to my work to like faculty you know you

don't need to worry about that but that's just more things that if you think about it can like benefit you a lot. So then what should you do while

lot. So then what should you do while you're at the conference? So, I'm going to order by my hierarchy of importance the different things in the conference.

The number one most important thing at the conference is the reception and the socials that you can get into. Uh, the

socials usually fill up on the first day. So, you should like go to the

day. So, you should like go to the Google booth, go to all those booths and talk to the recruiter and ask if they have an event. Um, you know, don't be afraid to ask. Once again, they're it doesn't matter it's a recruiter. It

doesn't really matter what they think about you. Um, then the poster sessions

about you. Um, then the poster sessions are the next most important thing. Um,

followed by the hallway track. So the

hallway track is kind of a jokey ner term for just people hanging out in the hallway during a conference and like having random conversations with people.

I really enjoy doing that especially hanging actually I'll get into this more in the next slides like I'll be explaining each of these things. Then

talks I actually think that oh I didn't finish writing that sentence. So oh yeah talks are talks are one way like they're only one direction. So, I really don't think attending talks is valuable at all

because I'm incapable of paying attention. Uh, unless it's super related

attention. Uh, unless it's super related to my thing. When you attend an oral session, you're usually trapped listening to like five talks and you only care about one and then you either have to like awkwardly walk out or just

like work on your laptop uh when you're wasting time when you could be talking to people. So, I pretty much never

to people. So, I pretty much never attend talks. Uh, you don't have to be

attend talks. Uh, you don't have to be as extreme as me, but I would really encourage you should consider poster sessions in the hallway track to be more important than talks. And then like the lowest hierarchy thing is leaving the

conference. So sometimes people will

conference. So sometimes people will like you know ditch a day of the conference to like go to a tourist attraction or something. I think that's really really really bad. Like that's a huge waste of your time. You should

really be maximizing the amount of time that you're inside of the venue and talking to people because this is a rare opportunity that you don't get.

>> So how do you do receptions and oh sorry what was that?

>> Can you go back to the previous slide?

Yeah. I would like to add one more item.

Lunch and dinner. You should narrow.

>> Oh, yeah.

>> I'm going there.

>> Yeah. Yeah. You talk about that.

>> Yeah. The lunches the lunches and dinners are also very important. So,

I'll I'll get to that though. I guess I sorted this by inside versus outside of the conference. So, okay. So, how do you

the conference. So, okay. So, how do you do a reception or social? So, here's a picture Sharon and I took at ACL because I think this was an example of a very successful social that I had where we tag teamamed the social. It was just the

two of us. We didn't talk to any of the UCSB people there other than us and we went around and introduced each other to the people that we knew. So, we used like sort of all of these strategies

that I talked about like the spider discussion with Chris Manning that was there. The tag teaming the canned

there. The tag teaming the canned icebreaker was there. That's where I was using the like, "Oh, what's something that you're really sick of at this conference?" And some people thought it

conference?" And some people thought it was actually William Cohen thought it was very funny when I asked him that. He

was like, "Yeah, I'm sick of people asking me what I enjoyed at the conference." Um, and then also Sharon

conference." Um, and then also Sharon and I were introducing each other to like the people that we knew. Uh, and it was really fruitful because we have overlapping but kind of disjoint sets of

people we know. Um, so I would be happy to, you know, at Nurips like I'll hang out with you guys as well and introduce you to, you know, people who I know. Um,

and when you see like someone you know in a circle, it's great to just go, "Hi." And that will bring you into the

"Hi." And that will bring you into the circle and they will like that's sort of an invitation for them to introduce you to the other people there. Um, if you don't know anyone in a circle and you want to talk to them, you can do that,

but you have to be careful to read the room because people will get really annoyed once again if you go into a circle, cut them off, and then be like, "Oh, so hi Choi, I want to tell you

about my work." Like that's really obnoxious. You should not do that. Um,

obnoxious. You should not do that. Um,

so you have to be careful to read the room. And one thing uh that I forgot to

room. And one thing uh that I forgot to put into this slide, but is also important that I think was successful about this is you should keep moving at the social. So you should try to like

the social. So you should try to like walk around the room. Don't spend too much time talking to any specific person. Like really you should be

person. Like really you should be maximizing the amount of like exposure that you have to different people. Um,

now how do you do a poster session?

Okay, first of all, this might be obvious, but you need to talk to the presenters. Uh don't just read the

presenters. Uh don't just read the posters. You're not going to get

posters. You're not going to get interesting information really from reading the posters. Uh you should treat reading the poster just as a way to decide who to talk to. But the goal is

to talk to people because this is the best chance to actually get to know people at the conference because they are broadcasting the relevant information like that you can make a connection based on. Uh also they're

desperate to have people come talk to them. Like sometimes people are just

them. Like sometimes people are just standing there and it's a great way to have a fruitful conversation. And if

it's really slow, you can do all the things that we talked about before where you can talk about random nonsense. You

can ask them where they're from. You can

ask like, "Oh, how what what year in your PhD are you?" Blah blah blah. How

do you like it? You know, you can have all of these different things to talk about. Just have a random chitchat with

about. Just have a random chitchat with this person if you think they're cool.

Um, and the other big thing that I do at poster sessions that I've gotten a lot out of is live tweeting the cool posters I see. So, this ties into some of the

I see. So, this ties into some of the value ads that we discussed earlier where not only are you logging the posters that you found interesting so you can return to them later, but you're establishing your expertise and giving

that curation value to other people in the community. So, they're saying,

the community. So, they're saying, "Okay, well, Michael is at column and he is like giving me these interesting papers on personas and evaluation and blah blah blah." Um, so you know that's that's adding to all the benefits about

building your profile that we talked about before. And then also it's doing

about before. And then also it's doing that add to the rolodex thing because you can at the person who actually made the poster and that's going to ingratiate them to you. They're going to be like, "Wow, thank you for promoting

my work, blah blah blah." And you make a new friend that way. So the thing to remember though when you're making these posts is you should be posting your insight. You should not be posting a

insight. You should not be posting a summary. I mean, you can post a summary.

summary. I mean, you can post a summary.

I guess the way that I do this is less that it's an insight instead of summary, but it's more that it's a specific summary of the thing I took away from it, not a total, not just like a

reiteration of the abstract.

So, okay, how do you do the hallway track? So, I hang around the coffee and

track? So, I hang around the coffee and catering stands a lot. Um, whenever my friends are there, I will try to basically sticky them and keep them around this common area by having a

conversation. Um, this is usually the

conversation. Um, this is usually the best place also to talk to busier people. So like if there is like a

people. So like if there is like a senior faculty you want to talk to, the least intrusive way to approach them is while they're like pouring their coffee or something. Um,

or something. Um, you can also, you know, as you see your friends walk by, like if you're standing in a stationary circle, wave at them, you know, call them over, introduce your friends to each other, do the

scaffolding. Um, and what should you do

scaffolding. Um, and what should you do outside of the conference? So, ditching

the conference, I really try not to. Um,

it can be good if you meet someone new to like leave the conference to like go to a coffee shop or something and come back. I've had some fun doing that. But

back. I've had some fun doing that. But

really, I don't go much further than that. So, I do not, you know, do any

that. So, I do not, you know, do any tourism during the conference. I save

that for like the extra days. Um because

even if you don't meet anyone new on a date, just if you are like reinforcing new connections that you have by talking to like one of your new conference friends, that's a way more like fruitful use of your time. So what should you do

for meals? Meals are like an anchoring

for meals? Meals are like an anchoring point for these connections. So this is tying into what Eric was saying. Uh and

if you have a good conversation with someone, it's a great idea to just ask them like, "Hey, what's your plan for lunch?" You know, especially, you know,

lunch?" You know, especially, you know, if you have something in common, if you you know, have a similar research interest or something. It's it's just a great way to have more of a conversation and I think people are usually pretty

happy to be invited because no one really has plans. Um, a heristic that I have is that I try to get lunch with people who aren't in my university like as much as I can even if they're already

my friends. Like some of my best pals

my friends. Like some of my best pals are like students at like USC or CMU.

And even though like they're my friends and I'm not really, you know, using that time to meet new people, I'm at least spending time with people I don't see every day. But it's really a waste to go

every day. But it's really a waste to go all the way to like Montreal or something and then just talk to the people you already see every day. Um, so

also you should be the person to plan events. People love to do things but

events. People love to do things but they hate to plan. That's why inviting people to lunch works so well. Um, and

when you do make a plan, you need to stick to it. So you can't change the plan. You can't give up if it seems like

plan. You can't give up if it seems like it's not taking off. Um, you just have to stick to it and usually things will work out. Uh, because a lot of people

work out. Uh, because a lot of people show up late to things. So like an example is like at every conference my friend Tus and I try to make a karaoke event happen. So we try to at Colum uh

event happen. So we try to at Colum uh Deepo was there for this. Nobody showed

up until like an hour and a half after the start time and I was really like come on guys no one's going to come. We

should leave. But we stayed and eventually like a bunch of people showed up and it was really fun. So we didn't give up on it. And at Colum we did like a we also did this like afterparty after this AI2 event where we brought a bunch of different like like we just inv I

invited my friends and said open invite invite all your friends too. and we

picked this bar and there was a group of like six of us that got there and we were just waiting, waiting, waiting for more people to come and it was a hockey night. So, the bar was just filled with

night. So, the bar was just filled with some, you know, Canadians watching the Montreal versus Toronto game, which is like a huge rivalry. Um, and we were worried that like this bar is like completely filled with people watching

the hockey game. Like, how are we going to do a social thing? But then the game ended and they cleared up and then people showed up and eventually we like filled the entire side of the bar and it was great. There were some good

was great. There were some good conversations. Once again, that was

conversations. Once again, that was mainly a time that I was just getting my friends to meet each other. Uh, super

good use of my time.