10 Tips for Grad Students (Or Anyone) at Scientific Conferences

Here's a nice summary of conference tips by David Shiffman at Southern Fried Science.

By far the best tip (that's coincidentally not the easiest one to execute):

4) Prepare an “elevator speech”. 

If you think it's hard to condense years' worth of work into 30 minute talks, try condensing your thesis topic into 30 seconds!