It all started with an e-mail. "EM students consider attending to SIOP conference", said the subject title. In the body of the message, Gloria Gonzalez-Morales, our coordinator at the University of Guelph (UoG), has explained that this is a good way to create contacts and explore the Northern American trends in I/O psychology (that's how they call WOP psychology there). Even though it seemed like a good idea, the costs were quite high. Nevertheless, I wanted to know more. So at the 6th WOP-P Winterschool dedicated to Bernhard Wilpert, I talked with Thomas Sasso, Ashlyn Patterson and Dan Van Der Werf, visiting students from UoG and asked them about the conference. What they told me is that every SIOP conference is a wonderful experience for students to broaden their view of the latest developments of the theory and practice of our profession and that there's a lot of parties going on. I liked what they said and three days later I paid the conference registration fee and booked the flight along with Justine and Andy (two of my colleagues with whom I were to spend my last semester at the University of Guelph).
And so it happened that in the evening of 10th of april, five psychology students were riding in a cab from Bush International Airport to the downtown of Houston, Texas. Out of those five, one had unclear information about the location of his hotel. After having crushed the driver's hand with the back door of the vehicle, he thought it was a good idea to ask him questions about his religious orientation and about how we should all be tolerant when it comes to the questions of faith. When the cab driver asked him why did he come to Houston, he said that there is this journal called SIOP and that it has a conference there. Having heard this, the other four students (I was one of them) started discussing the importance of putting garlic into the tomato pasta sauce. Apparently there were more things about which the open-minded student was confused. But this is not his story.
This story is about 4000 HR and I/O psychology students, professors, researchers and practitioners that gathered in the Hilton Americas Hotel for the annual conference of SIOP (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology) from the 11th til 13th of April 2013. And boy, was there was a lot going on. Twenty-one conference rooms were almost constantly packed with poster presentations (which were more or less interactive), panel discussions, communities of interests and other events. The idea of bridging the gap between science and practice permeated the atmosphere, all the participants did their best to find out how this can be done in their particular cases.
Indeed, many things were happening. To provide the visitors of the conference with at least a short description of every talk, the complete program was distributed to all of them. It had an appearance of a big book (imagine a paper issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, but double the height; for those of you who haven't seen one, let's just say that you wouldn't want to drop one on your foot). If you didn't like a talk that you attended, there were lot of others you could go to. But if you did like it, you had the chance to talk to the panelists after the discussion, introduce yourself, state your research interests (and even if you are not clear about them yet, it's ok as well!), share ideas and exchange e-mail addresses. Scientist and practitioners obviously wanted to talk to each other here.
And I wanted to talk to Gloria in the corridor of the Hilton venue about an ongoing project that was part of my internship at the UoG. I asked her for help and because she is amazing and never misses the opportunity to learn or teach something, she sat down with me, listened to me whining like a little girl for about ten minutes and then provided me with some sound advice. As we were finishing our dialogue, a slim, grey-haired man with bright blue eyes walked past us. Gloria paused and nodded her head in his direction. "That's Michael Leiter.", she said. I gawked at her in surprise. "THAT Michael Leiter?", I replied. "Yes. Go and talk to him.", she suggested, matter-of-factly. For those of you who don't know this, Michael Leiter is one of the first people to publish work on burnout, which was the subject of my position paper (he published a lot with Christina Maslach, the author of the Maslach Burnout Inventory, former assistant of Philip Zimbardo that made him stop the Stanford prison experiment and then married him; but this is not their story, either). I was undecided for a while, but then I ran after him. I introduced myself and couldn't find anything smart to say. In the end I just blurted out "It's nice to see there's a face behind he name on all of those articles I've read.". He smiled and replied politely that he's glad to hear that. In that moment, Gloria joined us and we discussed their new research that they do together. This is when I learned that the world of I/O (and WOP) psychologist is indeed a very small one.
This means that because you can connect to so many people in the field, even if you are not decided about your research interests and/or future career, SIOP is a great opportunity to gain some insight.
And not only that. For me it was a chance to reconnect with my roots. At this point I would like to give you a bit of my background: I come from a small country from central Europe, called Slovakia. I left my homeland to study work and organizational psychology in Italy in 2007 and I have lived abroad ever since. However, by acquiring the knowledge in the field of WOP psychology, I had difficulties in immagining myself working in this profession in the national culture in which I was raised, since a great part of the WOP theories come from the world that evolved on the other side of the Iron Curtain. And this is why I greatly appreciated when I attended the panel discussion on the internationalization of the training in I/O psychology and saw prof. Barbara Kozusznik, professor from the University of Katowice in Poland and member of the International Association of Applied Psychology, voicing the concerns of the countries that once were part of the Soviet Union. After the discussion we had a wonderful chat about the state of I/O psychology in this region and she even gave me some references on some accomplished professionals in Bratislava.
However, that particular discussion also was very special for an another reason. One of the panelists was professor José María Peiró. Those of you who have not met him will certainly have the opportunity to do so in the near future: he is the person who had the idea of an international master in psychology applied to work settings, gathered support for it from other professors from those european universities that all of you know very well and made it happen. He told the story of the WOP-P master, the continuous fight against red tape, provincialist mentality, and the frequent european resistance to using English language. The fight for an integrated curriculum aimed at teaching skills that will be useful for the students' careers and that will give them the opportunity to improve working conditions of people across different cultures.
Needless to say, this story stimulated a lot of questions and comments about the international cooperation between universities in our field: the American professors were amazed and filled with awe. The questions were about how to overcome the problems in international university education and how to prevent them. José María addressed many of them and acknowledged the effort and contributions of the professors, a great part of the administrative staff of the participating universities and students. The fact that Justine, Andy and me were sitting there to hear his words showed, that it is hard, but not impossible. And when it happens, it leads to an extraordinary enrichment of all the parties involved, especially of the students.
When I realized this, I couldn't resist the strong sense of pride, satisfaction and thankfulness for having the opportunity to be a part of this master. The learning opportunities that we as WOP-P students have in our reach are distinguished worldwide. And as I realized this, I looked at the smiles on Justine's and Andy's faces. I had a strong impression that they have felt the same way in that moment (but still, I could be wrong - make sure you read their SIOP story as well!).
Attending the SIOP conference gave me a broad and deep vision of the I/O (WOP-P) field on a global level. Behind all of the articles and books that we read as students, there are people who dedicate their lives to making the workplaces a better place for other people. Even though it may be hard to imagine by some of us, they breathe, eat and drink just like other humans and if you are interested in what they do, they love to connect to you, share their ideas with you and listen to those that you might have (some of them even ride the mechanical bull after the closing ceremony).
If I was to give one piece of advice to all the WOP-P students, it's GO TO SIOP! For those of you who won't have the opportunity, do your best to go attend EAWOP or other professional conferences in our field. Because even though there is not many of us, we can have huge positive impact on the world around us, if we talk together and invent and organize new forms of cooperation between us.

SIOP Conference 2013 in Houston