Castles and Coprolites

twitter meet up - complete with badge ribbons! Conferences can be a bit hit or miss for me, depending on how sociable I am feeling. The downside to being an introvert is that it can be really difficult to do the networking and discussion thing that is an important part of the whole conference experience. I think people are often surprised at how quiet I can be in person given the amount of social media stuff I do. But that is why I love social media, it makes interactions easier (most of the time). I actually managed to make quite a few connections this year at the SAA conference. Just like giving presentations, networking becomes easier with practice, and I find myself in a place where I finally feel like I know what I am talking about (it only took 9 years post PhD but hey). One networking event that was a lot of fun was the Twitter meet-up, though I didn't stay for too long due to the dreaded jet-lag. It is interesting to meet all these people in person that you only know t...

Me looking thrilled to be presenting my poster I just got back at the beginning of the week from the Society for American Archaeology conference, held his year in Vancouver. Although it is 'American' archaeology, the geographic spread of attendees and research topics is very international, and I ended up catching up with friends and colleagues from all over the UK as well as the US. I ended up being incredibly busy as I foolishly agreed to do three different sessions. Many months ago I was asked to participate in two sessions as a discussant, as well as submitting a poster on my NERC project. I assumed this meant a role of leading the questions at the end of the session, but on arrival realized it is almost the equivalent of a keynote, and involved giving an actual 15 minute presentation summarizing the papers and state of the field! Luckily the sessions are both topics on which I am passionate, and I managed to put together two talks that went very well. The first was ...