Last month, I attended the TRB 2024 Conference on Advancing Transportation Equity (TRB CATE 2024). The conference, which was held in Baltimore, was probably the most enjoyable conference that I have attended thus far (though I have not attended that many), for the following reasons mostly related to how good it was for networking. First, the number of attendees, which was around 500, was enough for almost all of the attendees to meet new people & network effectively; the presence of fewer attendees might lead to a situation where a large percentage of the attendees know each other, leading to other attendees feeling left out, while the presence of more attendees might lead to most attendees feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of meeting attendees unknown to them and therefore discouraged to do much other than spend time with known attendees (as often happens in the TRB Annual Meetings). Second, the conference was more focused on equity issues in transportation, so attendees were very passionate about this issue, and this led to more positive vibes & more fruitful discussions (in contrast to something like the TRB Annual Meeting, where the breadth of topics means that it is unlikely for someone working on pavement engineering to have much in common with someone working on public transit network redesigns). Third, conference organizers explicitly encouraged (at multiple points during the conference) attendees to network, and the schedule (especially including the presence of multiple poster sessions structured as receptions/mixers) included a lot of time for networking instead of being packed from start to finish with highly structured sessions.
I am especially grateful to my current employer for sponsoring my attendance given that I presented a poster about work from my previous job (and, interestingly enough, this was personally my first time presenting a poster in any professional setting). It reflects well on my current employer's willingness to take chances with their employees and supporting employees' presence at such conferences so that the employer's name is more publicized and the employee gets the professional development benefits of learning & networking. Additionally, I got to meet several of my colleagues in person, which felt even better given that most of us work remotely and many of them live in different parts of the US. As this conference happened during the second week of my current job, it really felt like an auspicious way to start this job.