I get periodic emails from my grad school about different seminars that they put on around the world. I normally take a look then delete. They're doing one in Nanjing in mid-October that sounds interesting.
Since I'll have a visa for China for my Nov travel, I'm assuming I could take a trip prior, it sure sounds that way.

Airfare is very decent, about $670 round-trip, AUS-NKG. The Hilton Nanjing has decent rates and gets good reviews here on FT (Hilton Nanjing. Hilton is also very close to the subway.

I don't speak Chinese, will that be a major problem?
I can read some of the characters; I studied both Korean and Japanese when I was younger, and they use some of the same characters, and they mean the same thing in English, but they are pronounced differently.

Has anyone been to Nanjing and have any thoughts on the city as a whole?
This would be my first trip to mainland China. I have been to Hong Kong.

Nanjing's not a bad place to spend a few days. It's also easy to reach other interesting places like Suzhou and Yangzhou from Nanjing.

You'll manage without Chinese, though of course it'd help a bit, especially when it comes to moving around. Sometimes a background in Korean/Japanese can help, but sometimes it can just create confusion.