As part of my Erasmus Mundus Master in Work, Organizational and Personnel Psychology degree, I am completing my internship period at Organization & Management Solutions (OMS) in Guelph, Canada. Being situated in North America, it was an obvious decision that the SIOP Conference held from April 11-13, represented a great opportunity to familiarize myself with the I/O Psychology state of art in North America. Decision taken, flight booked and off I went to Houston, USA to attend the conference.
After a car ride to the USA, a short stay at the USA border control and two rescheduled flights because of weather issues, I finally arrived in the warm Houston, Texas. Once there, I found myself to be staying in an enormous, luxurious hotel with other conference attendees. With the registration completed in the evening before the conference started and having had chosen the symposiums, panel discussion, round table discussions and posters I wanted to attend at the conference, I was ready to start the conference and enjoy the luxurious facilities and services offered by the hotel.
First day, I managed to attend various panel discussions and to have a look at the fantastic posters presented by various scholars and researchers. After having been emerged in the field head to toe for the last two years, it was amazing to discover how many aspects, areas and directions of I/O psychology I was still unaware of. During the breaks in-between the sessions, I managed to make great connections and learned a lot more about the implications of I/O psychology in North America. In addition I had the pleasure to engage with very interesting people, from University professors, to graduate students and practitioners and learn about their areas of involvement. My highlight of the first day was a panel discussion on Humanitarian Work Psychology’s role in the future of I/O psychology, I found this talk to be particularly interesting and very thought provoking.
After an interesting first day, I was now ready to newly immerse myself into the theories and practical experiences shared on the second day. Today I had the pleasure to go to a round table discussion about Cross-cultural work design, during which we discussed how work could be designed to better accommodate different cultures. Yet again this day was very fruitful for networking, during which I had the pleasure to meet some of the few European I/O psychology practitioners present and meet some other known European faces. Later on in the evening various receptions were held, which again presented a good opportunity to network and have some great food and drinks.
Third day and last day, a very interesting experience is about to go to an end. Today I went to a very interesting session on training cross-cultural competences, which I found to be of high importance in the field of I/O psychology. Furthermore I managed to get some more information about incivility in the workplace that proved to be very insightful for a training on the same topic, I was working on for my internship. Later on, I had the opportunity to attend a panel discussion about “Internationalizing I/O programs”, during which various international I/O programs were presented inter alia the Erasmus Mundus WOP-P program. Following this, it slowly came to the time to say goodbye and get back to the internship in Canada.
Overall I had a great experience at the SIOP conference and I am looking forward to hopefully attend SIOP 2014 in Hawaii. I would recommend to anyone working or interested in the field to attend the conference and get an insight in what is going on in the field out there. For any more information, have a look at www.siop.com where you can find all information including the program of this year.

SIOP Conference 2013 in Houston