The devil is in the details

Bad Cop

Friday was the deadline to register for this year's Keystone Conference on HIV Vaccines. This year's conference will be a little different than the ones that I have gone to the past two years, but it should still be interesting (different organizers which leads to very different program both in terms of speakers and in terms of logistic setup according to the program. And a different location. Among other things.) Actually, I think that I will pay attention to details a lot more this year after having been told about many of the "differences" between this conference and the ones held in years past. I will be interested to see how they play out for someone at my level.

In the past, a small group from our lab has attended, including the boss. Generally everyone has had a reason to go (presenting or working in some capacity) with the major exception being my attendance last year. This year, due largely to the differences cited above, my boss will not be attending. We have many more graduate students than we had at this time last year, and he basically said that he would pay for any of us to go, sort of as "scientific tourism." A few of the graduate students quickly signed up, and then went about convincing our fellow graduate students to do the same.

Somehow it was decided that the two most senior grad students (Iceland and myself) would play "Good Cop/Bad Cop" in convincing people. I was displeased by this notion, because it implied that I was the Bad Cop. We asked Evan and Mike (who later joined our band of convincers) and they both agreed that I was obviously the bad cop, as did everyone else who was asked. (Perhaps it didn't help matters that I karate kicked the next person that we asked.) I am not sure how I feel about this, but apparently I am the Bad Cop. So watch out.

End result: 6 (out of 9) students, 3 post-docs and 1 faculty member that we know of are going. (I think??? This may be revised.) Tomorrow's job is to deal with setting up our hotel rooms and getting plane tickets (to all be on the same flight.) Hopefully it will be a good time. I think that for me, it will be instructive on a political/networking level at the very least.

posted by Immunegirl @ 11:34 PM