Academic Conference Survival Tips
Conferences like AEJMC can be intimidating. Here's how to make them less so
At this time next week, AEJMC’s annual conference will be underway in Washington D.C.
It’s one of the main conferences in the journalism/media academic world. I won’t be there this year — one of the ways I was able to attend IACS in Barcelona was to make that my one conference of the year, which, fair trade — but I am hoping to have some sort of a research roundup in the coming weeks.
Conferences can be hard. They are prohibitively expensive, especially for grad students and early career faculty. It’s a lot of time and money and energy to invest in a 12-minute presentation.
Big conferences like AEJMC can also be incredibly intimidating. They take over large hotels in big cities. It feels like everybody else knows everybody else, like you’re Cady Heron walking into North Shore High on the first day of school. At their worst, they are the definition of the old boys network, where the professor you are talking to is always looking over your shoulder and scanning the room for someone more important to talk to.1
I have a lot of feelings about conferences. I love seeing my friends from other schools. I feel energized after a conference, full of ideas that never get done. I spend a lot of money attending them. I see parts of the country and the world I’ve never otherwise seen. I think a lot of time and energy is spent talking at other academics in hotel conference rooms and nothing really comes from that. I wonder if it’s all worth it (granted, having tenure no doubt shapes this view).
But conferences are here, and maybe you’re going to one. Maybe you’re going next week. With that in mind here are five tips to survive AEJMC or any conference you attend, in no real order. A reminder that all of this advice is coming from a straight, able-bodied white dude, so full acknowledgement that I’m playing this game with all of the cheat codes enabled:
Don’t feel pressured to drink
An odd thing to start with, maybe. But a lot of the social opportunities at conferences revolve around receptions, cocktail hours, socials hosted by schools that have open bars. There’s the perception that these events are where the real stuff happens at conferences.
These are, admittedly, a lot of fun. I’ve visited my share.
But if you don’t drink, if you can’t drink, I can see how it can be intimidating. Especially if you are a young woman or young person presenting as a woman in a room full of men, where power dynamics are at play.
So allow me a dad moment here — be responsible if you drink, don’t feel pressured to if you don’t want to. Find a buddy, be a buddy.
See the city you’re in
Do not spend all of your time at the conference at the conference. Get outside the hotel and walk around. If you’re in DC next week, the National Portrait Gallery is a splendid place to spend a free quiet hours. There is no conference presentation that is more important than seeing a new (or familiar) part of the world.
Don’t stress out about any of it
Again, easy for the tenured white guy to say, right? But I remember my first conference. The AEJMC Mid-Winter Conference, 2010, at the University of Oklahoma. Oh my God, was I nervous. This felt like the big time, our chance to impress faculty members who, in a few years, maybe would hire us. I remember my friend (the now Dr.) Liz Woolery, and I, OBSESSING over our presentation.
And it went well.
But it was not magic. It did not change the world.
In the end, it didn’t matter — in the best possible way.
So my friend, don’t stress. Don’t stress out about your presentation. Your poster looks great, really. And if you’re doing the job market - you’re going to crush it. Nothing that happens at a conference will define your career. It’ll all be fine. It is not worth stressing over.
There is no right way to conference
Some people go to a lot of panels. Some people hole up and only do their own presentation. Some people ditch the socials to have dinner with their family or friends. Some people Live Tweet (live X? Live Threads? Live BlueSky Please Tell Us Why? I don’t even know anymore) all the panels.
Guess what?
There’s no one way to do it right. You don’t have to do anything.
If you’re at the conference to present, you’ve already succeeded.
Find your people
So, this is the secret sauce. This is what makes conferences worth all of it.
Finding your people.
I remember being at the Summit on Communication and Sport in 2012, and seeing a guy get up, take a photo of the audience at the beginning of his presentation so he could Tweet it. He seems cool, I’ve got to meet him, I remember thinking. Dr. Galen Clavio and I have since written half a dozen things together and hosted a podcast for several years.
At AEJMC in St. Louis in grad school, I was having a drink at the hotel bar when I recognized two women from sports panels. We got talking, and then sat down with Dr. Marie Hardin, now the dean of Penn State’s communication school and a legend in our field. One of those women, Dr. Molly Yanity, is one of my closest friends to this day.
A few years ago, when AEJMC was in Washington, my friends Jeremy Littau and Chip Stewart and I went to lunch off site. They introduced me to Nando’s Peri Peri Chicken, which … my friends at AEJ, go there next week (this singlehandedly makes up for Jeremy’s famously horrendous views on M&Ms and candy).
Finding the people who loved sports media and studying sports journalism as much as I do gave me a purpose in academia. It gave me people who spoke the same language, people I could bounce ideas off of. It gave me a community within this overwhelming world.
And that community is everything.
My friends and I have named this move after a professor we both know (who shall remain nameless) who is legendary for doing this at conferences.