The AACC Annual Meeting 2008 Experience

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My Talk
This is the first time I had to talk twice in a conference! The first time was expected... I was scheduled to talk on Monday. However, as soon as I started to relax, my IRRI supervisor, Melissa, popped the surprise to me: I was presenting a second time! In the next few hours! I felt like iced water was thrown at me at that moment... I was dumbstruck!

So naturally, I had to go through the motions of getting nervous for a talk once again: loss of appetite, clammy hands, butterflies in the stomach (and I ate a heavy breakfast of bagels and cheese a few hours before too), the works. And then there's the absolute requirement: I had to go for a long walk... so I ended up going back to the hotel to retrieve my presentation.

In the end, I was happy with both presentations, although I think I performed better in the first one (and attribute that to the unexpected nature of the second one). However, the second one generated a better discussion session, even though I had the last talk. That's always good... and both supervisors had good things to say about the presentation. Whew!

Meeting People
The AACC is always one of the best ways of meeting people in different industries concerned with cereal chemistry. During my first attendance (in Florida) I met US-based Filipinos, mainly; I didn't mill about to talk to people as much because I was more interested in seeing the sights right after the sessions and meetings end at 5pm. This time, however, I met a lot of interesting people... Filipino scholars based in the US, students based in Europe, professors, and research- and industry-based people. Talking with people is becoming easier as I get used to meeting new people, and being in international conferences does help a lot.

There were a lot of activities provided allowing attendees to meet up: there were the dinners hosted by different divisions of the AACC, the Young Professionals' Event which was slated right after the talks, and meet-and-greet sessions sponsored by corporate members of the AACC.

Breakthrough Science
The conference allowed me to keep updated with research going on around the world. Although reading journal articles helps me with this, it is certainly much better to actually listen to the authors. Too bad I missed the symposium where Bob, my Uni of Qld supervisor, was speaking in; I would have learned a lot from that session. My first talk happened to be scheduled at the same time slot as his, so I wasn't able to attend his discussion.

Not only were the talks informative, the posters were equally enlightening. Too bad the authors were not by their posters; I was only able to talk with a few authors. Nevertheless, the posters were all good.

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