SfN2014: Day4 – Presenting a poster, Parties and Reunions
So today was showtime. Today I presented my poster.
I think it went well. A good amount of traffic. Great questions. Made some good connections that may lead to possible collaborations… and that’s what’s it’s all really about. Collaborative, shared science. And no one yelled at me. I remember back in my early grad school days, presenting a poster at SfN, and a senior prof from somewhere that had used a similar nerve staining technique ripped me a new one because I didn’t cite her paper… on a poster. Pretty extreme, scarred me for life.
This was much better. Also saw some other great posters near me in the “Human Emotion: Behavioral and Neural Mechanisms”. For example I had a great conversation with the presenter for “Perceptual and physiological differences between genuine and posed emotional vocalizations” about the differences in facial coding and facial EMG, using psychological assessments like SAM and how to map out emotions in a multidimensional manner. Jason Metcalfe from DCS did consulting work for the US Army looking at how competitive stimuli act as intrinsic motivators on performance. His poster was next to mine and it was interesting to speak to him about his experience working for the military. His poster was quite busy. Interesting stuff. Bethany Bracken of Charles River Analytics also had a very busy poster on “Interpreting cognitive and physiological states from biometric sensors to predict performance degradation” where she acted as the sole subject, subjecting herself to attempting to perform a variety of tasks while balancing in a rocking boat and being measured biometrically. The most interesting part to me was the software she’s using to analyze the data, transforming results into bayesian models and other forms of modeling. This was pretty interesting.
My own poster was taking a look at how messaging and products can affect us (“prime” us) into different moods that may affect how we see ourselves (self-esteem). We measured this using self-esteem questionnaires and biometrics. The conversations I had with people were great and I think it could lead to some really interesting follow up studies and for my company, new methodologies.
After the poster session I was exhausted! Standing for over 4 hours in one spot is rough. It was rough when I was younger and is still really difficult. So I was super tired by the end. So I quickly grabbed lunch and then headed back to the hotel. There were some talks I wanted to see. But with being so tired and having some work work that I needed to do, meant I had to make the tough choice to head back to the hotel.
Parties
Once work was done and I was rested up, I headed out (in the freezing cold!) to Madam Toussaud’s Wax Museum for the Biotechne Party. This was pretty cool because I’ve always wanted to go but also always thought it was a bit pricey to justify (especially since the big museums in DC are free). Also there were free drinks and food.
One of these is wax, the other may be the bartender…
And in DC Madam Toussaud’s focuses on American history…
As well as American pop culture… Here’s Taylor and I just hanging out and having drinks…
So thanks to my friend Katie for inviting me out. Biotechne had a great showing at this meeting with a fun awesome booth and prizes (you can read more about it in my previous post).
Reunions
After the Biotechne party, I grabbed cab and headed out to Adam’s Morgan to have diner with some old friends that I’ve met through my journeys in neuroscience from my grad program and postdoc. It was tradition in grad school to go to an Indian restaurant for “Indian Dinner” during neuroscience with multiple labs of grad students, techs and professors to meet up and eat. So while most of the labs involved did not attend this year, we (who have since all moved on from Purdue Univ) decided to meet up to recreate the tradition.
It was good times. Great to catch up and we ended up having a 3 hour dinner that was mostly all of us just talking and laughing and having a great time.
So good to see everyone, thanks for coming out if you read this!
So tomorrow is the last day, then I hop the bus back to Philly. I still have more to see tomorrow, so I still have at least one more update to go.
This has been a lot of fun and hope that everyone has enjoyed it as much as I have.
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