GradLife

Last week I attended the Genomes to Biomes meeting, held right here in beautiful downtown Montréal. This was the first ever joint meeting of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution-Société canadienne d’écologie et d’écolution (CSEE/SCEE), the Canadian Society of Zoologists-Société candadienne de zoologie (CSZ/SCZ) and the Society of Canadian Limnologists-Société canadienne de limnologie (SCL). A lot of acronyms for one meeting!

So what does one do at a scientific meeting? Well, for the most part, you talk.

After the talks comes more talking. The closing banquet of Genomes to Biomes, at the Sucrerie de la Montagne, May 29, 2014.

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This Monday, March 31st, McGill’s Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, Office of Sustainability, and the Post-Graduate Students Society, hosted the third annual Three Minutes to Change the World event. It was a self-dubbed Ted-like event and it certainly delivered on that aspect. The students presenting (mostly Master’s students) gave dazzling performances both in English and in French.

Let me walk you through the presentations while peppering my summaries with some of my thoughts as an audience member. To keep in theme with the fact that this was the first time both English and French talks were given, I will summarize the English talks en Français et les présentations francophones in English!

Here are the cast of presenters – and a cast it is since this was quite the show:

Jay Olson a commencé l’évènement avec un tour de magie: “Choisissez une carte, n’importe laquelle et gardez la en tête” (Je traduis et je ne suis pas magicien donc ne vous attendez pas à beaucoup de magie de ma part!). La structure de la phrase et la façon dont elle est posée influence notre choix explique Olson; en fait la majorité des gens choisiraient l’as de pique ou une carte de coeur à visage. Utiliser cette forme de suggestion dans le contexte de thérapie de réhabilitation est un objectif de la recherche d’Olson. J’avais choisi le Joker noir en passant! (more…)

Photo by AdamR, Freedigitalphotos

About a month ago, I wrote the first post of a two-part guide on how to prepare a good conference presentation. I had asked my colleagues to give me their best advice, as I had never presented in a panel session before.

Well, now that the presentation date has come and gone, I thought I would share some follow-up thoughts.

Here’s how it went:

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