Many institutions are limiting travel and meeting attendance with the idea of saving money. Yet, I think meetings always save research money for me. I find that when I attend meetings the unpublished informaiton, ideas, and discussions usually save me 100's of times more money that the cost in terms of helping to focus my efforts and to avoid areas and problems already solved or well under way by others. What do you think?
Scientific meetings can bring money to your department and institution in that they can make it more likely that your research will receive external funding. Presenting your work at conferences can give you feedback to write stronger grant applications. You can also meet with contributors in your field that might want to develop grants with you. Reviewers of grant applications may also be more favorable to your applications if they know you're someone who's actively involved in your field.
John -
I certainly believe that this is an important consideration.
There are two sides to this: There are those who may consider a conference to be a vacation-type perk, and then there are those such as you, who get a great deal of good from them.
One big problem may be management. Does it consider a conference to be a boondoggle that they may want their people to avoid, or hand out permission to attend as a rotating perk, or do they understand the value? One may find it easier to obtain permission to attend a conference at a less desirable venue.
Consider the annual Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in North America. I attended, and presented at that conference series, and others, numerous times, and found it mind broadening, if taken seriously. It is also a quick way to publish (in a proceedings). Yet many seem to go primarily to attend the many tours going on during the conference.
I once took vacation time and paid to go to a conference to give a paper, because my supervisor was hoping to go instead, basically for a paid vacation.
There should be a serious discussion about the value of conferences, which I agree can be very great. Unfortunately, many do not seem to have 'the right attitude.'
A balance should be achieved with regard to budget and benefit.
I certainly sympathize with your situation/concern. How to best achieve awareness for this matter is a difficult question. Hopefully your thread/question here may be helpful.
Cheers - Jim
Provided it is well structured and well planned and you got the right resources person in place then obviously its going to be beneficial but from what I have experienced most of the time scientific meetings are a waste of resources, most often than not we talk big things in meeting but nothing is put in to action..
Conference proceedings are generally a quicker, assured, uncensored outlet for research. That can be useful.
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