There is a lot of advice ‘out there’ on attending and presenting at conferences, but students should note that not all conferences are the same and what is recommended as best practice in one discipline or for one specific conference might not be appropriate at another conference. Below we have pulled together a range of online resources that are generally relevant to archaeology students attending and presenting at WAC-8*.
General Conference Advice:
Your first conference – this article gives good general advice on attending your first conference, including how to prepare and some important things to do during and after the conference. (The Thesis Whisperer website has many other quality posts on attending conferences, so have a look at the related posts on that website for further advice.)
Build your conference karma – this post is full of useful tips for being a ‘good’ (i.e. conscientious or thoughtful) conference delegate and is particularly useful if you are not familiar with how academic conferences are run.
Recording Archaeology Interviews with EAA 2015 Delegates – not all of these interviews give specific advice on attending conferences but quite a few do and are worth watching for different perspectives on the value of attending conferences.
Presenting Conference Papers:
Art of the Conference Paper – good overall advice on giving conference presentations, including how to choose a conference, prepare an abstract, and give your paper. (Please note that the use of panel discussants is not as common at archaeology conferences as it is at anthropology conferences.)
Showing Up: Creating Captivating Presentations – an article with practical advice on presenting at conferences, which includes topics that many people do not think about such as warming up your voice and techniques to capture the audience’s attention.
Question time – many students get nervous about this part of presenting at conferences but question time does not have to be stressful. This post has good advice on common types of questions at conferences and suggestions on how to think about your responses – it can be useful to have a plan for how you would deal with any difficult/off-topic questions and it is most likely you will not need to use it! (Please note that at WAC the usual format is for brief question time to take place after each paper. If you have any questions about the format of a session you are presenting in at WAC-8, please contact the relevant session organiser directly – most likely, they will tell you in advance!)
Presenting Conference Posters:
5 ways to Poster = Fail – as we highlighted in our previous blog post, presenting a poster at a conference is not the ‘easy’ option compared to presenting a paper. Posters can be a very effective way to communicate your research at an academic conference but you still need to invest time and energy into creating it. This post is about creating a poster to present at a conference and outlines 5 things you should avoid when designing your poster.
Tips for designing better research posters – this is a useful and clear infographic on designing posters, with links to further resources if needed.
Visual Aids for Conference Presentations:
(The tips below are relevant for those designing posters as well as visual aids for paper presentations.)
Presentation Design Tips – sometimes as academics we are not trained on how to effectively use visual aids in our presentations. While it is not a requirement that anyone use visual aids (most commonly PowerPoint) in paper presentations, it can be a powerful tool for communicating to your audience. Garr Reynold’s website, Presentation Zen, is a great resource for those who want help learning how to effectively incorporate visual components into their paper presentations.
The Non-Designers Design Book (this link will start a 30.7MB pdf download) – as a general guide to graphic design this is an incredibly useful resource, especially for a non-graphic designer. It might be particularly useful for those working on a poster, but the general rules are applicable to any form of visual communication, including presentation slides.
Social Media at Conferences:
3 reasons why you’d livetweet – a good introduction to why live-tweeting at academic conferences is important and the benefits of it, and a follow-up post from the same author with practical tips on how to live-tweet.
Live-tweeting at academic conferences: 10 rules of thumb – a good general introduction to the value and professional aspects of live-tweeting conferences, including notes on the ethics of navigating how to and whether to live-tweet. (Please note, the ‘rules’ in this blog will not necessarily be the rules at WAC-8; advice from the WAC-8 conference organizing committee, session convenors, and individual presenters should take priority over any ‘outside’ advice.)
The Twitter Glossary – for anyone new to Twitter, this is a useful glossary of key terms to help you learn more about the social media platform most commonly used during academic conferences.
Twitter and Archaeology: An Archaeological Network in 140 Characters or Less – for a good general introduction to the use of Twitter by archaeologists, we suggest starting with this paper by Lorna Richardson available in full online.
Key Social Media Accounts Relevant to WAC-8:
World Archaeological Congress Page
WAC-8 Kyoto Account = @wac8web
WAC Student Committee Account = @WACSC
Do you have any further questions on this topic? Perhaps you know of some other resources that would benefit students? Let us know by filling in the contact form, emailing or contacting us via social media. If we don’t know the answer we can help you find someone who does!
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*Please note that the WACSC does not represent the official WAC-8 conference organizing committee or any other entity of the broader WAC organization. For further, and the most up-to-date, information on WAC-8 please visit the official website.