2010 for me has been filled so far with many activities, presentations, and conferences. There was a period from about May to mid-June where I was traveling around for various conferences. From Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Boston for the APS Conference, back to Knoxville for two days, and then it was off to the IMC Weekend at West Virginia University. My next stop was to head to Wayne State University in Detroit for the Crisis and Risk Communication Doctoral Seminar. Wow – definitely pretty busy! My next stop was to head off to the AEJMC Conference in Denver for the Job Fair. It was a wonderful experience for me to meet with fellow scholars and professionals at the conference while conducting interviews. It was very exciting! 🙂
Another conference badge to add to my collection 🙂
The fall semester started soon after AEJMC, and I successfully defended my dissertation proposal as well. 🙂 So far, September has indeed been a pretty busy, but fabulous month! 🙂 At the end of the month, I would have gone to two additional conferences specifically looking at social media and crisis communications. The first conference I went to was more of a working conference with professionals (government) and academic professionals. This conference was a wonderful learning experience for me – I gained so much knowledge and insights over the course of a couple of days – it was great. Gaining experience not only talking about social media and future trends to students and professors, but also discussing this with government professionals really was educational for me. The next conference / meeting is coming up in a few days in Minnesota, sponsored by the NCFPD.
This past year, I worked on a grant project with the National Center for Food Protection and Defense (NCFPD) looking at social media and the use of crisis communications during the H1N1 crisis last year. This meeting will be an opportunity to meet and talk with fellow researchers, students, and professors in risk and crisis communications, on the issue of food safety. This is actually going to be the main focus in my dissertation research. One of the papers that came out of this project was submitted to the upcoming NCA conference in November, which won a Top Paper award. Very cool! 🙂 I will be presenting a poster of our research at this upcoming meeting – I am really looking forward to it. 🙂
In summary, to be an effective scholar presently with the current status of the economy, we have to not only have a strong presence at academic conferences, but we also need to have a strong presence at professional and integrated conferences where we can talk with others about our research, and enhancing our own reputation as an emerging scholar. Both of these grant projects I have worked on for these two conferences were wonderful research and learning experiences for me. Hope you all are having a wonderful day!
Best Wishes,
Karen
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