There are hundreds of conferences held all over the world on all sorts of different topics. You probably know which the big conferences in your field are, and maybe you've attended them in the past. But if you work in an interdisciplinary setting, or if your work has crossover with another field, you might be wondering – should I attend conferences outside of my field? Today, we'll discuss the pros and cons of this, and at the end we'll share some tips for how to prepare for a conference when you're new to the field. Pros of attending conferences outside of your field:

Conferences can be great career boosters and good fun to attend, but they can also be chaotic, rushed, and rather intimidating. If you are someone who struggles with time management, you may find the conference days difficult to navigate. To help with this, try these tips on managing you time during conferences:

Ahh, conferences: the best chance to see the many diverse characters of academia in one room. And yet, you always seem to bump into the same sorts of people at these events. If you've attended a conference, you've surely met each of these people:

Most of us have a story about a first date that seemed to go well, yet the person never called us back. It's often a guessing game trying to figure out what you did wrong. Did you talk too much? Get food stuck in your teeth? Have bad breath? It's an uncomfortable experience—and it isn't isolated to romantic relationships. Every researcher has met a potential collaborator or client at a conference, presented them with a business card… and never heard from them again. If your networking connections are ghosting you, it's easy to get stuck wondering what's wrong.

When you are working as an academic, attending conferences is an important part of your job. Attending a conference allows you to present your work to the academic community, to hear about the latest research by others in your field, and to network with fellow researchers to help expand your knowledge and promote your career.

Your research is finished, and you can't wait to present your latest discovery at an upcoming conference. Unfortunately, organizing your findings has been a nightmare. It's tough deciding how to best present a project to people who know little about it—especially when you know every single angle. 

Ahh, conferences. They can be deeply informative and a lot of fun – but they can be a headache too! One point of pain in attending conferences is the application stage, where you send off an abstract of your work together with information about yourself and hope to be allotted a poster presentation or a coveted talk. If you're applying for conferences and finding this to be a stressful experience, don't worry, you're not alone! Here are five of the biggest struggles that academics face when applying for conferences.

Conference Monkey is proud to introduce the winner of the ESD Conference Invitation. Conference Monkey invited one lucky participant to our partner conference, Economics and Social Development Conference, which took place in Prague. Meet Elmira Mirguseinova from Lithuania. 1. Could you introduce your academic background?