{"id":40301,"date":"2017-08-29T14:39:26","date_gmt":"2017-08-29T21:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=40301"},"modified":"2017-08-29T21:45:17","modified_gmt":"2017-08-30T04:45:17","slug":"conference-small-talk-definitive-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/conference-small-talk-definitive-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"Conference small talk \u2013 the definitive guide"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Making small talk with someone who\u2019s just given a talk, whether at a conference or at a colloquium or invited talk, can feel intimidating, especially if you\u2019re a student or early in your academic career. But as someone who\u2019s currently spending a lot of time on the opposite side of that divide, I\u2019ve realized that when I\u2019m a speaker, I really really want people to come up and talk to me. So here\u2019s your pep talk, and some tips on what to say.<\/p>\n

The key thing to realize is that most of the time, you know more about the speaker than they know about you, so you need to start the conversation and you get to pick what it\u2019s about<\/b><\/i>.<\/b><\/p>\n

Even before the talk, the speaker\u2019s name and abstract has been emailed around the department or is in the conference booklet, and after the talk you\u2019ve had somewhere between 20 minutes and an hour to hear them talk about what they\u2019re interested in. If it\u2019s a course, maybe you\u2019ve even had weeks. Maybe you\u2019ve googled them, maybe you\u2019ve read their articles, maybe they\u2019re your academic hero, maybe you just stumbled into the talk but now you find you\u2019re enjoying it, whatever. You know something about them that makes them interesting to you.<\/p>\n

The speaker, on the other hand, might not even know the names of anyone in the audience at all (at a conference) or might know only their one or two host(s) (at an invited talk). Or even if they know half the audience, if you\u2019re one of the people they don\u2019t know, then have no particular reason to want to talk with you. And even if they do have a general desire to meet people in their audience (and they probably do), all they have for small talk options with these unknown people are very general questions that can be asked of any linguist, like the classic academic icebreaker \u201cSo, what do you work on?\u201d and its relatives \u201cSo, are you a student?\u201d and\u00a0\u201cSo, where are you from?\u201d (Note that in an academic context, this means\u00a0\u201cWhat university(s) are you affiliated with?\u201d and not\u00a0\u201cWhere did you grow up?\u201d)<\/p>\n

Protip: if you\u2019re new to academic conferences and want to seem like a srs linguist, make sure you have an answer to\u00a0\u201cSo, what do you work on?\u201d It\u2019s acceptable to say\u00a0\u201c[phenomenon] in [language]\u201d as a short answer, but it\u2019s better to have a 30 second summary that gives the other person something more to hook onto, like\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m looking at constructions like [Example McExampleface] in [language]. You might expect people to say [this thing], but in fact they say [other thing].\u201d This gives them a couple of places to ask follow-up questions from if they\u2019re interested. If someone gives you a\u00a0\u201c[phenomenon] in [language]\u201d type answer though, a good way to continue the conversation is to ask \u201cSo what would that look like?\/Do you have an example?\/What have you been finding?\u201d\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you work on?\u201d is a perfectly acceptable academic icebreaker for standing around the reception desk \/ coffee table \/ buffet line, but if you\u2019ve just seen someone\u2019s talk you can\u2019t ask them what they work on \u2013 they just told you! If you hover around silently long enough, they might ask you instead, but you run the risk of someone who does know how to talk with speakers starting a conversation first. Of course, if you\u2019re not actually interested in the speaker, you can leave without chatting, but if you are, there are better options than hovering around silently! Here are some of them:<\/p>\n

Unlike the question period, you don\u2019t have to have a formal\u00a0\u201cquestion\u201d about the particular talk in order to go up to the speaker and talk with them afterwards. So instead think about how to start a conversation that will be interesting and relevant for both you and the speaker. A good way to think about this of options is to think about why you came to the talk and what you got out of it:<\/p>\n