Microbiology Society Annual Conference Belfast: A practical guide to presenting at conference with no data

By Luke Richardson

Another year has passed, and just slightly less important than Christmas and Mum’s birthday is the Microbiology Society Annual Conference. This year, myself and José Cachay flew to sunny Belfast to present our findings and hobnob with industry, ECRs, and more senior academics who might have foreknowledge of where jobs might spring up. I presented in the Eukaryotes in Health and the Environment forum while José searched for anyone who’d give him free antibody samples to try and make his double-membraned, problem-child algae behave themselves.

Conference abstracts are a strange business: you probably want to present your latest and greatest results, but you have to say what you’re going to talk about at least two months in advance, usually more. This commonly leads to the researcher going “experiment x or analysis y will be done by then”, and writing an abstract that promises to present those results. This is a direct insult to the ineffable circuitry of the universe, and events will transpire to prevent that data from materialising. I of course promised to present the results of the first metaproteomic analysis of any kind in my study system, bagging me a slot. This nudged the scales of karma which nudged my foot which made me fall down the stairs, lose two months of lab time, and not have any of the data I said I would. Naturally, I fell back on older results and started my talk by disclaiming why I had none of the data I said I would, although this process was definitely aided by presenting the X-ray. 

I actually received quite a bit of useful feedback and ideas to take me forward: Firstly, some very old-school techniques for culturing difficult organisms were suggested, namely boiled dirt and barley liquors, and someone in the crowd finally identified an unknown organism in my micrographs as a dead testate amoeba. I’ve written before about the importance of being honest about your successes and failures, and would not have received these ideas without being desperate enough to say “I’m stumped, any ideas?” to my audience.

As to the rest of the conference, it was very enjoyable. There was some fun ECR networking with “Human bingo”, where you had to find a Scottish MSc student, a Czech who worked on viruses, a British Eukaryote researcher (for which I was in demand) and so on. Food was pretty variable, being good when it was available but also sometimes there was just like three flapjacks and some coffee. I’d also like there to be a greater focus in future on microalgae, as these fascinating and increasingly commercially, environmentally and socially relevant organisms were severely underrepresented.

All in all, if I’m still in the business this time next year, I’m sure I’ll be back for more.