Friday last, I attended the Source Event —an humongous careers fair for scientists, organised by Naturejobs. Some 1100 attendees crammed into the Business Design Centre in Islington to work out what they should do with their lives.

This year’s event easily trumped the 2007 debut, with twice as many exhibitor stands (40), and a bigger and better venue. And cop a load of the muffins:

Sadly, the main hall—a vast barrel-vaulted space like a baby St Pancras—was off limits thanks to a visiting beer festival. Still, I almost got the wrong place when I saw this banner:

The talks were broken into three parallel streams (does that make them canals?): a graduate stream, a postdoc stream and a set of talks on non-traditional careers. I sat in on the latter. Over the next few days, I will review four of these talks that might be of interest to a wider audience.

Tuesday: Volunteering overseas.

Wednesday: Working for a Contract Research Organisation.

Thursday: A career in industry, working on cosmetics.

Friday: Editing and writing.

Stay tuned…