What you need to know for going to a conference.

Overall
Always keep your ears open for opportunities to obtain travel money!

Logistics
Register for the conference at least two months before the date.

Book your flights and hotel reservations at least one month in advance to save money and ensure availability. It is best to book earlier because there may be multiple events going on in the city of the conference, which means hotel rooms may be full.

The accounting department will not process travel money until after the trip. So, if you want to use money from the Graduate School, GDBBS and PBEE, you have to pay for the expenses on your own credit card, then process an expense report online back at Emory.

Save all of your travel receipts and tape them on to 8.5x11 paper in order to process for reimbursement within two weeks of your return. You will need to obtain account numbers from the above sources to enter in on your expense report.

Academic
Prepare your oral presentation or poster well in advance of the meeting.

Use the PBEE logo on your slides and posters to help advertise our program.

Be aware of font size and of your color scheme. Make sure that the audience can read your slides/poster.

Read over the requirements for presentations and follow them (i.e., putting your presentation on a CD or disk-on-key, whether or not they will accommodate personal laptops, etc., whether posters should be formatted horizontally or vertically).

For oral presentations: practice giving your presentation in front of others (especially if it is a new talk).

For posters: have others read it in advance and leave ample time for printing...you never know what might happen.

Think of questions that you might be asked after your presentation or during your poster session and how you would address them.

Look through the program in advance and identify the presentations that you would most like to see (especially important if there are concurrent sessions).

Browse the participants' list and identify people that you would like to seek out and talk to. Network, network, network!