BES Undergraduate Conference

On Monday I attended the 2nd BES undergraduate careers conference at Charles Darwin House in London.  There were speakers from a range of organisations, providing lots of advice and guidance for budding new ecologists.  As a mid-life career changer, I felt rather old compared to the rest of the audience!

The penultimate talk of the afternoon was given by Tom Ezard, University of Southampton, who talked about the importance of Twitter and blogging as tools for young ecologists.  I must admit I was sceptical at first.  Faced with numerous Facebook pages and OU study forums, I find that 95% of this information is irrelevant to me (or even demotivating), and is actually a distraction from studying.  There is the odd bit of useful information on there that does help me, and I'm sure there's other stuff that I just miss in amongst all the rubbish.

So why would I want another piece of tech firing even more information into my already busy head?  And what would I post that others would find remotely interesting?

I subscribed to Twitter yesterday and learnt that you can follow without having to reply or write your own 'tweets'.  And in a couple of minutes I had subscribed to follow a handful of organisations that I am interested in. I can see their latest news and views at a glance, and its a really quick way of seeing what's going on.  Maybe I can be converted to this after all.

And as for blogging, well, let's just see how long I can keep this up.

For a full run down of the day, check out the blog of Jen Cooper, one of the BES undergraduate fellows who helped to organise and run the day.