Similar to the last blog post, I just returned from the 2023 MRS Spring Meeting in San Francisco, CA 🌁 where I volunteered as a Symposium Assistant (SA). I believe this was the first conference that I attended without presenting anything and it was a good experience overall, though the volunteering work had a mix of pros and cons.

Why volunteer?

As I already mentioned, I wasn’t presenting anything and the MRS Spring Meetings (also my first one!) tend to have very little metallurgy, so I didn’t really have a reason to go. Except this year, the conference was in San Francisco at the Moscone West Convention Center, so there also wasn’t really a reason not to go. The only expenses would be the registration fee ($185 early-bird, student member rate), food, and BART fares, which seems very reasonable for a quality conference like MRS. Moreover, MRS offers several volunteering opportunities for students where we not only get a small stipend, but our registration fee would be waived, so it breaks even. And we get to tune into cool science, either as a blog writer or SA. Seems like a sweet deal!

The gist of it

As an SA, we have two main responsibilities:

  1. Count attendance at each talk.
  2. Assist with audio-visual (AV) technology.

Both are pretty straightforward. For the first one, they gave me a sheet of paper with a table on it where I record how many people are in the room for each presentation (count heads ~5 min into the talk). If there is a no-show for a speaker or a substitute speaker, I indicate that as well. For the second task, I am mostly the one who runs out into the hall for an AV technician if there’s a problem with the projector, microphone, etc. This seemed to happen once per session, though it was always an easy fix. At the end of each session, I recorded on a timecard which session I assisted and then got one of the session chairs to initial it. For some of the sessions, the chair asked me to give time signals, while in other sessions the chair did it themselves.

Prior to the conference there was one Zoom training session where they went over the logistics, and then there was an identical training session Monday evening at the conference. For some reason, they asked us to attend both, which didn’t make much sense to me.

In terms of compensation, SAs are paid $40 per session (each one is up to 4 hours long, so I guess $10/hr?) and additional $10 for the Monday night, in-person training session. If we assist in at least four sessions, then our registration fee is waived as well. So… was it worth it?

Pros

  • It’s easy! SAs don’t have to prepare anything and just have to count attendance for each talk, which takes ~10 seconds. AV problems occur all the time and you just have to fetch someone who’s trained to handle it.
  • Some of the sessions are really short. Although each session is originally listed as 4 hours long (either 8am-12pm or 1pm-5pm), many of them are not fully booked, so you may find yourself done early. I recall my shortest session had only five talks and was over in 75 minutes, but I still got $40 for it. 🤑
  • You get to listen to some cool science! Idk, maybe this isn’t the perspective of some, but I thought it was neat to learn about things out of my field, like aggregation-induced emission.
  • You get paid a reasonable amount. $40 per session isn’t great, but it’s not the worst, especially if your registration fee is also covered. 🫰🏼

Cons

  • You might not get any (or all) of the sessions you applied for. After sending in an application with preferences, I received an email that none of the slots I signed up for were available. So then after lots of back and forth I basically said “give me anything” and ended up with three bio-related sessions. 😔
  • Hell, you might not even get selected at all. Someone else in my lab told me that they also applied but weren’t even given the option to pick other slots. So I guess it’s kinda competitive…
  • You might have to sit through some really bad talks. It’s one thing if the topic is outside your area of expertise/interest, it’s even worse if it’s a truly poorly constructed talk, and I had to sit through a few of those. Actually, I found that it was typically session dependent, with some having very clear standards and excellent works, and others were true free for alls. 🤷🏼
  • It’s pretty boring. The job is so simple that it makes me wonder why they can’t use another method to count attendance, like having the session chair do a scan or even use AI?? A few hours in, a few sessions later, and it might feel like a waste of time.
  • You don’t get the money right away(!) Due to various logistical hurdles, they will mail you a check for the money you earned 4-6 weeks after the conference is over. And the registration fee isn’t automatically refunded, but also in the same time frame. So here’s me hoping that the check will come soon…

In the end, I’m happy I got this experience and a chance to see some friends talk at the final session I assisted. MRS is always a little bit all over the place (pretty much sums up the state of MSE) but tends to be a high-quality conference. Looking forward to future MRS conferences… though I’m on the fence about volunteering. 😜