The Umeå Postdoc Society organised the Young Investigators Symposium Umeå on the 3rd of October. This is the first of the two blog posts reminiscing about the event.
Arguably, the highlight of this year’s activities was the Young Investigators Symposium. It is, therefore, natural that we reflect on its success. I talked to the organisers (and I am one of them) and read the amazing feedback we received after the event. In this two-part blog post’s first instalment, I will summarize what we, as organisers, think about the symposium. The next part will focus on the feedback.
The symposium, organised jointly by UPS and UCMR, was the first of its kind and was attended by more than 100 participants. There were informative talks, interesting keynote presentations, posters, and ample opportunity to network.
“Participating in a symposium from a different perspective (an organiser instead of a participant) was the most enjoyable aspect of the symposium,” says Wei-Sheng Sun, postdoc and treasurer of the UPS.
I think he speaks on behalf of all the organisers as we all feel ecstatic about the event’s success. Especially considering that none of us on the committee had organised something at this scale before. We were nervous and unsure of how things will turn out. However, all the time spent planning, meeting, and arranging stuff ultimately proved its worth!
“Making sure everything goes smoothly is a lot of work for people backstage.”
Anaïs Lamy
Anaïs Lamy, former president of UPS, had a more altruistic opinion as she mentions that planning a wonderful day for enthusiastic people was her driving force. “It was great to work with a group of motivated people with the same goal,” she adds.
Certainly, we were all motivated to make this day a success. I believe that one of the most enjoyable parts was to be in the driving seat and manage an event like that. It was challenging and there was potential for things to go wrong (and as it would turn out, they did!).
Talking about the challenges, Wei-Sheng says that contemplating these problems in advance was the most difficult aspect. As scientists, we are trained to be calculative but this was as unpredictable as any experiment in the lab.
“Knowing the uncertainty and problem in advance was a huge challenge”
Wei-Shen Sun
Anaïs added that she was prepared for things going wrong. Her biggest concern was making sure that the audience didn’t realize there was a blunder.
Indeed, damage control was the biggest test for me as well. We were supposed to play a recorded statement from Prof. Emmanuelle Charpentier, but owing to her busy schedule it was difficult to arrange. Unfortunately, we had advertised it on the website and it was really hard to confront the audience and admit we had failed to deliver on our promise, right at the beginning of the symposium.
When asked about what would they do differently next time, Anaïs chuckles and says that a coffee at the registration desk would be her priority!
It was a cold morning and I agree it would have been great to have a coffee. On a serious note, she realizes there were certain pitfalls, like not receiving certain orders in time, which she believes could be avoided next time by ordering things way in advance during the planning stage.
“We could have done something like a rehearsal to go through the sessions to fix problems beforehand,” says Wei-Sheng. Clearly, he is a perfectionist!
“For real, It went pretty well, and there are always things happening last minute, we adapted well,” Anaïs concludes.
