Are you looking for a job?

This post contains a fun (imho) anecdote from the (30,000 person) neuroscience meeting I am currently attending.

I was presenting a poster yesterday afternoon, in the neuroethology section of this meeting. This was, on its own, a very new experience for me: mine was poster MMM35 (they start at A1), and the poster session was in this gigantic warehouse-like space at the San Diego convention center. There could have easily been 10,000 people in this room.

About 1/2-way through the poster session, a scientist from [a prestigious university] approached me, after listening to me explain about my poster and asked "Are you looking for a job? How would you feel about joining our new group in [a relatively new area of research]?"

Now, one of the things I struggle with is being confident that the work I am doing is of interest to the general scientific community. This sort of feedback (and that of other people I spoke with) reaffirms that I am doing something at least mildly worthwhile (in addition to fun!).

Thus, I declare SFN to be a success, with several days more conferencing to go!