Sports Medicine Australia: Asics Conference for
Science and Medicine in Sport
Phuket, Thailand, October 22-25th 2013
Sports Medicine
Australia has a tradition of selecting a ‘boutique’ conference venue every two
years. With the Hilton Arcadia in Phuket selected as this year’s venue,
everyone attending could not have asked for a more beautiful location with
white sandy beaches accompanied by crystal clear waters. This year’s conference
was attended by 480 international attendees, which translated into over 150
oral and 50 poster presentations. As per expected, the amount of high quality
research was evident. Clearly this piled up the pressure on myself to deliver a
presentation of the same calibre. Fortunately, my presentation session was on
the first day and when my time came, all things went as planned, leading to a
productive discussion in the subsequent Q&A.
Although a huge
sigh of relief was lifted after my presentation, I soon realised that this was
when all the ‘actual’ work started. I found myself running between sessions in
order to listen to specific presentations that were relevant to my field.
Personally, the best part of the conference was listening to the opinions of
other researchers, thus allowing myself to learn more about the different
experimental designs that others have adopted to explore similar variables.
Most importantly, I was fortunate enough to engage in discussions with
researchers from Universities in Japan and the East Coast of Australia. Current
signs appear promising, and I hope to be collaborating with them in a future
study.
Another
highlight of the trip was the series of workshops that were made available to
attendees. I registered for one titled: ‘Publishing your work’. This workshop
was an excellent resource and will come in extremely handy in the subsequent
months, as I am about to complete my thesis. Clearly, the opportunity to sit
down with the Editor in Chief and three Associate Editors of a highly ranked
Sports Science Journal does not come by often. The Editors provided tips on
what they call: ‘getting past the first hurdle’. They highlighted the
importance of a sound abstract, a well-constructed hypothesis and a conclusion that
accurately reflects the results, and most importantly answers the hypothesis.
In
summary, the opportunity to attend this conference will play a huge role in my
development. It has provided me with networking opportunities and information
that will come in very handy in the near future. I strongly advise anyone who
is considering attending an international conference to do it. Sometimes as a
PhD student, we are ‘stuck in a bubble’ and there is so much more that can be
gained by meeting fellow researchers.
Marc Sim