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Are you afraid of asking your supervisor for approval to travel to Amsterdam to attend the PSI conference?

Do you need convincing arguments for them to approve your travel?

In this episode, we talk about arguments, that help you in your discussion with your supervisor. We're talking specifically about the PSI conference 2018 in Amsterdam, but these points will very much be applicable for future PSI conferences as well.

You probably don’t want to tell them, that Amsterdam is a very nice city and the social activities will be lots of fun. But here are some arguments, that might help you to get the approval:

1. The conference is highly relevant to statisticians in the pharma industry. There are no ivory tower research sessions with little practical applications. All the topics were selected having statisticians in the pharma industry as the target audience in mind. 3 days packed with specialized content.
2. Many of the sessions will help you to work more effectively in your job with higher quality outcomes. You will learn how other companies solve the same problems that you have.
3. The vast majority of speakers are very experienced presenters, that will enable you to learn much more in shorter time. Lots of work is put especially into the many invited sessions, to compose the different presentations and give you a holistic experience of a session rather than a collection of vaguely related topics.
4. There are a number of workshops during which you can learn hands-on skills to apply directly to your work. E.g. you can participate in a development and coaching session targeted especially for statisticians (not a general one, that any training company offers).
5. During the informal breaks and at the social events in the evening you may meet with your clients (if you work for a CRO) or your vendors (if you work for pharma) and build relationship and trust. This will make current or future collaborations much easier. Alternatively, it may help to build future business relationships.
6. Are you working on regulatory or HTA submissions? Many sessions and workshops will cover hot topics and after attending them, you will be better prepared for your high-impact contributions to these critical submissions for your business. You will also meet some staff from the HTA and regulatory bodies at the conference.
7. Do your business partners don’t understand what estimands are? Do they have a hard time to understand the Bayesian concepts that you’re applying? Learn at the conference to better communicate about these topics from industry leads on these fields. This will help you to be more impactful during critical conversations with your business partners and you can provide examples of how others in the industry are solving problems.
8. #8 Do you have a formal development plan? Put it in there and your supervisors will be happy that there is already something ticked for their HR deliverables. And if this is in-line with your business objectives – even better.
9. The conference is cheap compared to a DIA meeting or any international medical conference. Take further advantage of the early bird discount rate up to the 21st March 2018.
10. You have a poster to be presented at the conference. Ok – this only works, if your supervisors approved the submission of the poster. But it is always something for them to sell upwards, that you’re an active contributor. The poster deadline is the 28th Feb 2018.

Not every reason will work in every situation and with every supervisor. Try to understand, what goals your supervisor has and tailor these arguments towards these goals.

Register and find out more about the conference here!

Do you have more reasons to attend? Please leave a comment below.