The Young Scholars Network (YSN) organized a workshop at Etmaal 2022 on networking in academia, particularly focused on networking on online events. We invited two speakers, dr. Jennifer Streeter who shared her insights from her published paper “Networking in Academia” (EMBO report – Science & Society), and dr. Jessica Piotrowski who shared her vision of networking at conferences through personal experiences.
During the first section of the workshop, both speakers gave hands-on tips on how to generate meaningful and lasting relationships for a diverse network. They brought up important and concrete actions to start a conversation, avoid awkward situations, including how to prepare before the conference for successful networking. Followed by an exchange session where both speakers responded to questions. The second section was a virtual playground (in the platform “Wonder”) to let the attendees practice the new skills and foster motivation to network in future online and physical conferences. The workshop was received well by the conference attendees as over 50 young scholars participated. The large participation shows that guidelines to network in academia are an important topic among young scholars to help them succeed and benefit from conferences to enhance a diverse network.