A practical guide for socially awkward researchers on making meaningful connections at academic conferences. The post emphasizes that connecting is primarily fun (not just networking), provides concrete strategies for approaching people during poster sessions, coffee breaks, and hallway conversations, and reminds us that most researchers at conferences are awkward CS nerds looking to connect too.
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I was a kinda awkward teenager. If you are a CS researcher reading this post, then chances are, you were too. How to navigate social situations and make friends is not always intuitive, and has to be learnt. This is particularly true at a conference, where the event is short (just a few days) and the number of people may be intimidatingly large (in the thousands of people). So I wrote this post to give some pointers on how I might go about socially navigating such events, particularly as a newcomer.
I hope to do the following two things:
Throughout this post, I use the term "connect." You can think of it as meaning something in the space of "be friend," "make acquaintance," "develop a rapport," or "establish commonalities." The meaning of the term has been somewhat cheapened by professional connotations and, e.g., LinkedIn.
Finally, this post is primarily written with large-scale machine learning conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR) in mind. Vibes and strategies may differ at other styles of conferences. For example, theoretical computer science conferences don't usually have poster sessions. And at a smaller conference, depending on how fitting the topic is, you might have an easier or harder time finding someone you can connect with. So your mileage may vary, but I think the overarching principles remain sound across a variety of conferences (and social settings more generally).
Primarily: because it's fun! For better or for worse, researchers often tend to be friends with other researchers. This is perhaps unsurprising, as we befriend people with whom we have something in common, and research tends to be a large part of researchers' lives. I have made many friends through the research world, who I look forward to seeing every time I go to a conference or workshop. It is generally fun to have friends all around the world: case in point, I started drafting this post while waiting for a researcher friend to arrive, as we were going sightseeing in Hong Kong. I talk daily with many friends from the research community, who are based in a variety of locations, on a plethora of different topics (research and non-research related).
Secondarily, it can be useful for professional reasons. People don't generally enter and leave the research community multiple times: the people you will meet at conferences may be your professional colleagues for your entire career. You will read each other's papers. You will do service together. You will meet again and again at conferences. You may even go to each other's 65th birthday parties (a common academic tradition). So it can be worthwhile to meet and connect with the relevant people early on. It will give you some familiarity of who's doing work in your research area and facilitate more natural interactions with them in the future.
This is not (directly) a guide on how to "network." Networking connotes a primarily professional motive: for example, you're seeking to find a job, or to feel important because you're interacting with (supposedly) important people. I just like making friends and connecting with other human beings. Part of why I do research is because of the community. It feels good to be part of something bigger than just myself. I find it a bit off-putting and transparent when people are interacting to network while pretending to be trying to connect. Nonetheless, like I said, connecting with people can be professionally valuable.
Now that we've established that it's worthwhile to connect with people, how do you do it? Note that the advice I'll give here is fairly general purpose (broadly speaking, "find things you have in common") but specialized for academic settings.