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Tips for First-Time FAccT Attendees
Congrats, you’re going to your first academic conference! But what do you do, how do you prepare? In this blog post, we will go over some tips for first-time FAccT attendees!
Before the conference
Reach out to researchers whose work you find interesting as they might be attending FAccT and interested in a coffee chat! When reaching out to these researchers (many of whom may be more senior than you), a tip is to give them some context about why you’d like to meet them, and keep the email brief. Don’t focus only on senior researchers, and also try to connect with people in the same “extended cohort” as you. The connections you make with people at the same career stage can be some of the most fruitful connections. Not everyone will want to schedule things ahead of time, but it can be nice to send an introduction anyway.
Look at the conference schedule and mark down sessions you’re interested in attending. You can look at the abstracts for papers and sessions, and see what interests you.
Prepare a quick elevator pitch for what you’re researching. You will be meeting a lot of people, and need a quick way that gets the point of your work across to different audiences. Good elevator pitches are short (~30 seconds long), and can include details about a project you’re working on or something you’re reading about. An elevator pitch should be a point of connection between you and the person you’re speaking with, so talk about something you enjoy! It may be good to get feedback for your elevator pitch (such as from your advisor(s) and colleagues), and to practice your elevator pitch so you become confident when sharing about your work.
During the conference
Join the FAccT Conference Slack and follow the FAccT Bluesky Feed to keep up-to-date with things happening at the conference! There are other other ways to keep updated and connected with FAccT here.
Prepare, prepare, prepare if you are giving a talk! Make sure your talk is within the time limit, take care to ensure your slides aren’t too wordy or that words and images are too small, and focus on the big picture takeaways of your paper. You want to feel comfortable and prepared when you give your talk, so try rehearsing until you feel comfortable with your talk and the flow of the presentation.
Ask (kind) questions during talks. This shows that you’re interested, and you may have a nice chat with the presenter afterwards! Good conference questions are concise, open-ended, and briefly describe why you care about the answer. Some of the best questions tug at an open thread, and allow a presenter to elaborate on a piece of the work they couldn’t quite fit into the presentation. Examples of good questions we’ve heard are “Huh, how important is this assumption to your method? Could you talk more about what relaxing it would look like?”, or “I’m curious about this unexpected finding. What are your thoughts on why that might have occurred?”
Attend CRAFT (Critiquing and Rethinking Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency) sessions. This is a more interactive track that allows us as academics to engage more deeply with other groups deeply affected by computing systems. Here are some past examples of CRAFT sessions (2024, 2023).
Attend sessions both inside and outside of your research domain. While it’s good to be aware of new research in your domain, FAcct is a unique opportunity to get some inspiration from papers that don’t necessarily connect with what you’re doing. Past attendees agree – 82% of survey respondents answer that they enjoyed “Learning from perspectives that I do not usually encounter in my other professional contexts”.
Lunch and dinner plans are often spontaneous; the standard is to ask others about their plans for meals, and try coordinating. As a junior researcher, your network may not be as large as you don’t know so many people in the community yet, and that’s ok (it improves with time)! One suggestion is to find someone you know, and try tagging along with their group.
Keep all of your receipts for reimbursements! One suggestion is to take a picture of your receipts and create an album for easy access later.
Remember to take care of yourself!! Conferences are overwhelming and busy, and it’s okay to take breaks. It’s normal to leave for a bit in the middle of the day to rest from jetlag, meeting so many new people, and learning so much new information.
Take time to explore. Research can be quite a solitary activity, and conferences are a great way to connect with other researchers over travel. Make the most of the opportunity — try out the local cuisine, do some sightseeing, and invite attendees you meet along the way!
After the conference
Stay in touch with the people you’ve met, such as following them on social media, or continuing an interesting research discussion once you’re both back home.
Reach out if you’d like to get involved with organizing FAccT next year. For instance, maybe you would like to help review papers, be a student volunteer, or one of the chairs!