NeurIPS 2024 Reflections

I’m grateful for the opportunity to attend NeurIPS (Neural Information Processing Systems) 2024, where our research team presented our third paper—StreamBench [1]. Here are a few reflections from the experience at the conference:

Improvements for Poster Presentations

During my poster presentation, I noticed several aspects where I could improve:

1. Telling a Good Story In an interactive poster session, the most important thing is to spark the audience’s interest before diving into the research details. To do so, it’s crucial to provide a clear storyline—start with the motivation, context, and significance of your work so that the audience can see the bigger picture. Once they resonate with the context, they’ll be more receptive to your technical explanations and abstractions, which brings us to the next point.

2. Using Examples to Illustrate Abstract Ideas Another lesson is that posters need concrete examples and should not be overly abstract. There are many times when only after I provided real-world examples did the audience’s confusion begin to clear. The reason is simple: a single abstract concept can be interpreted differently by different people, and they might imagine different scenarios in their minds. This means the audience and I are not being “on the same page.”

These two points were actually mentioned in one of the tutorials at ACL 2024 called Presentation Matters [2], but I feel I didn’t execute them well this time. I’ll keep working on it! (Highly recommend checking out [2].)

How to Allocate Time at a Multi-Track Conference

Large-scale events such as NeurIPS often have multiple sessions running in parallel, making time allocation crucial:

1. Talks and Presentations Can Be Watched Later Keynotes, invited talks, or oral sessions typically have recordings available. Since these sessions are more one-way communication with limited interaction, one can watch them afterward without missing much. Reserve precious conference time for activities that require in-person interaction, such as poster presentations.

2. Poster Sessions In my view, the poster session is the most in-depth and efficient way to exchange information during a conference. If time permits, arrive a bit earlier than the official start time to visit the posters you’re most interested in. Early on, there’s usually fewer people, and the authors are usually more energetic and ready for more in-depth discussions.

3. Attend Workshops NeurIPS is huge and covers a wide range of topics, which are usually only briefly touched on at the main conference. If one is interested in a specific research area, we’ll often gain more by attending high-quality workshops. This applies equally to invited talks, oral presentations, and poster sessions—so don’t skip workshops!

Reserving Social Energy

Beyond contributing research and gaining new knowledge, there’s a third important purpose for attending conferences: networking. However, for someone like me who is introverted, networking can be mentally draining—especially at a conference like NeurIPS, which offers numerous social activities. I often find myself in a state of mental “half-paralysis” if I overextend my social interactions, where my thinking and communication abilities drop significantly. Next time, I’ll make sure to manage my social energy more carefully to stay effective during critical networking opportunities.

Conclusion

Overall, attending NeurIPS was a very fresh experience and led me to reflect on how to present research, allocate time, and manage personal energy more efficiently. I hope that with these reflections, I’ll be able to make even greater strides the next time I attend a conference of this scale!

[1] StreamBench: Towards Benchmarking Continuous Improvement of Language Agents
[2] ACL 2024 Tutorial: Presentation Matters