Building connections: How scientists meet each other during a conference

Mathieu Génois (1, 2) , Maria Zens (3) , Clemens Lechner (3) , Beatrice Rammstedt (3) , Markus Strohmaier (4)

1 CPT - Centre de Physique Théorique - UMR 7332
2 CPT - E5 Physique statistique et systèmes complexes
3 GESIS - Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences [Mannheim]
4 RWTH - Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen University

We present the results of two studies on how individuals interact with each other during a international, interdisciplinary scientific conference. We first show that contact activity is highly variable across the two conferences and between different socio-demographic groups. However, we found one consistent phenomenon: Professors connect and interact significantly less than the other participants. We interpret this effect as non-tenured researchers using conferences to accumulate social capital, while established researchers already have such capital. We then show that groups mix well during conferences, but note that a language-based homophily is always present. Finally, we show that the dynamics of the contacts across days is also similar between conferences. First day connections are established, then filtering occurs during the following days. The connection turnover between consecutive days proves to be large (∼50 %), and related to the intensity of interactions.

Domaines: Physique et Société [physics.soc-ph]; Analyse de données, Statistiques et Probabilités [physics.data-an]; Sociologie; Adaptation et Systèmes auto-organisés [nlin.AO]

Mathieu Génois, Maria Zens, Clemens Lechner, Beatrice Rammstedt, Markus Strohmaier. Building connections: How scientists meet each other during a conference. 2019. ⟨hal-03572162⟩