Hi guys

I'm due to give a conference paper in a few weeks. I was wondering about other people's approaches to all this conference paper business. I gave my 1st paper in Europe during the autumn and I had planned that paper for months rewriting and rewriting. It was basically an adapted version of the 1st chapter of my thesis and I was within the mindset of "here I am. This is what I do. I am a serious researcher".

The paper I am presenting is a few weeks will be a version of the 2nd chapter of my thesis but I feel completely differently about the conference. I feel like simply presenting as if this is my work-in-progress fellow researchers, what do you think? I guess it's a more informal approach but I feel like I'm trying to find my own feet within a chapter that is moving a little out of my field and I'd like good feedback about it.

My strategy at the moment is simply to introduce myself and my research. State how this separate research field impinges (not that is a quintessential phd word right there!) on my studies. State it's a work in progress and would appreciates thoughts and feedback after. Give the paper. Engage in the panel discussion and hopefully get some thoughts. Hopefully some drinks and chat afterwards.

My point is just that I'm very relaxed at the moment about the experience. I see it more as what can I learn from these experts rather than seeing it as a performance in which I have to prove myself.

I suppose it depends on how formal you think other papers might be; will there be other postgrads presenting or will you be one of few among seasoned academics??

My approach to conference presentations tends to be informal. I try to present with just my slides, not to read from the text and speak in quite a conversational tone. Those are the presentations that I enjoy listening to. Having said that if you do make it more informal, I think there is more pressure to be a good presenter. Some people might misconstrue a relaxed presentation as lack of preparation.

One of my colleagues always gives formal presentations and reads his papers which are always theoretically heavy and dense. He was contacted recently and asked to write a chapter of an edited book based on the paper which he had presented. So maybe there's your answer???

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Hey! I think it depends on the kind of conference you're at and who's going to be there. I did a couple of presentations at a massive conference in the states last year and am doing another couple over there this year, but I have always been presenting results. I did go to a few presentations over there where people basically talked a bit about their ideas and then asked the audience for feedback, but this approach didn't seem to go down that well, and I got the feeling that these presenters didn't really go home with the feedback or the answers they were after. But then this was a huge conference where the emphasis was on disseminating results from different disciplines, and that was what most people went to the presentations expecting. If I'm honest, I was a bit disappointed when I sat through a couple of talks from which I didn't learn anything, where the presenters were there mainly for their own benefit, and most of the audience didn't respond that well. Having said that- they were not necessarily the best presenters anyway. If you're going with that approach I think that's fine, but I would keep part of your presentation for that, and spend another part of it presenting something a bit more solid so that people will take something away from it. But it does depend on who's there as well and what type of conference it is- my audience were quite a formal bunch of academics and practioners so I would have felt uncomfortable delivering anything that went against the general flow of the conference, but if your audience are more informal then that might work! Good luck with it anyway! KB