Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending another academic conference.
Its focus was very narrow. Yet we found 32 people also interested in said narrow focus. And honestly, I'm shocked that this focus still exists after 1960.
Funding was stretched to the limit for travel and the like, but once we got there, we were housed in a beautiful hotel for two nights, sponsored by X University. The food was good, the alcohol plentiful, the lodgings multiple stars.
And yet, I rather wish I had not gone.
I have a love/hate relationship with conferences. We all sit there, listening to the panel or sitting at the table, as Person One reads verbatim from her prepared 10 page paper with no emotion or care. She is followed by Person Two, an older man whose voice is barely audible. He is engaged in exciting work, he will tell me later on with vigor and excitement. Yet during his presentation, we can hear little and what I hear is listless and boring. Why do academics turn OFF their charm while presenting?!
The Q&A period oscillates from the dull and obvious to the sharp, poking demands of Underestimated Field, who sits at the back furiously scribbling her notes about how much this presentation offends her very being. Silverback uses the floor to press his new book or ask how this relates to his work. No one answers anyone's question and a small handful merely circle-jerk for awhile. The great majority sit there, slack-jawed, hoping that time will just start marching forward a little more quickly.
What is the point of conferences? It seems to me that the presentations are just the excuse to see people whose books we've read. To put names to faces, and to hook up (or gossip about those stupid enough to hook up) with a distant colleague.
At the end of the day, I find I have learned little. I am exhausted and bored out of my mind. X University put out a lot of cash for this conference. But to what end? The best moments were at the bar later.
I've been doing this for almost a decade now. But I cannot think of a conference experience that has been a genuine learning experience. It's always just an interesting social occasion.
What is your relationship with conferences? Have any ideal stories? Is it just social or have you had an "aha!" moment during a panel that just changed your life?
Is it ever worth the money and time? Can I hold out for something better?
I attend conferences in my discipline partially for CE necessary to maintain my license.
ReplyDeleteHowever, my experience is nearly opposite yours--at a large meeting, I feel like I'm at the most incredible all you can eat buffet imaginable, and I agonize over which of three simultaneous presentations to attend.
I like to make sure the bar at the conference hotel doesn't up and run away. You'll usually find me there.
ReplyDeleteConferences are necessary because it's inappropriate to ask a bunch of academics to fly across the country just to meet in a bar for a few nights.
ReplyDelete@Academic Monkey
ReplyDeleteThen you should tell your apparatchiks not to send you to conferences....I thought the whole point of the conference was what happens afterwards, sort of like with what happened at Artists' Confrerences in the USSR. The first hour or two is mind-numbing Party-approved kludgery - the "party" afterward is where the real ideas were generated. If the administration gets to waste time with new building openings, cultural gabfests, etc., the professors deserve the conference.
I absolutely despise conferences, for all of the reasons you mentioned. Yet I know that everyone wants to see conference presentations on CVs and the like, and there's the hobnobbing that you mentioned, too. So I only do as many as I can possibly stand. That's generally about two per year. (I'm in the humanities, ps.)
ReplyDeleteThis is the same as the eternal question "When does the motivational speaker actually start being motivational?" Never, as far as I'm concerned.
ReplyDeleteI went to a conference once with a whole group of my colleagues that included an administrator. A day into the conference, the administrator asked me how things were going. Me, being the usual honest, people want to hear the truth, right?, said, "This is a waste of my time." One knuckleheaded session (took two of them to come up with this) said, and I quote,"You'll learn more form each other than from us (the moderators)." They proceeded to put us into groups so we could share and brainstorm. WOW! No, AHA there, I'm afraid.
The administrator said I was the first person from our group that wasn't really enjoying this. Now, either my colleagues were a bunch of fucking liars, or I'm just particularly intolerant of this type of thing. I realized, however, that the others were probably a bit more "tactful" since the school was picking up the tab.
I loathe in-service, motivational speakers, brainstorming, group-think, etc. Etc.. I just don't get anything out of these types of situations. I can get really jazzed by a great book or idea and do some really, innovating, award-winning teaching. But that other stuff is just not my style. I know others get something from it. I try to not sneer at them. But, while we often spend a great deal of time talking about how students are individual learners, and we have to cater to their particular learning style, there is a whole lotta making all teachers fit a mold and participate in things and teach/learn the same way: standardized syllabi, 5 page lesson weekly lesson plans, in-service (where someone else decides what we NEED to know).
I chafe at it. I bite my thumb at it.
Guess I'm a snowflake...maybe it takes a bit of snowflakiness to teach other snowflakes. Wax on...wax off.
I'm also in the humanities, but my experience has also been the opposite of this. Not all papers are winners, of course, but every time I go to a conference I come away with SOMETHING new to think about. Even at the worst conference I've ever attended, I ran into some interesting people and swapped some interesting ideas about our shared discipline. I've certainly NEVER seen anyone use Q&A as a time to push a book, although, admittedly, I've seen some less than stellar questions. Still, overall good experiences. My only complaint is that conferences are generally too expensive - I'd happily go somewhere less interesting, and stay in a crummier hotel, for the chance to talk to my colleagues.
ReplyDeleteYou may be going to too many conferences. Try cutting down, so that every conference you go to gives you the sensation they did when you were still in grad school, of just about everything going on there seeming new. I suffered from this, and cut down partly because I've come to detest air travel so much, partly because there are too many people who often go to conferences in my field who I can't stand, and partly because of the budget crunch. It worked: I now learn a lot at every conference, because the only other way I learn what other people are doing is reading journal articles. (Lucky me.)
ReplyDeleteI've seen both sides. I've been to conferences that are dynamic, exciting and give me all new ways of looking at my own research (AND are fun on the social end of things), and I've been to conferences that made me wonder why I came because nobody was talking about anything that even vaguely applied to me. So now I'm picky. I have completely stopped going to conferences in the latter category, even when pressure is exacted upon me by colleagues who think it's just part of an academic's duty to their larger field to go to those shapeless, general sorts of things. To me it only makes sense.
ReplyDeleteIn my previous job I avoided conferences as I thought they were a waste of time. The presentations were all too technical or too general for me to use.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy academic conferences though. (I wrote about them on RYS) and I've learned a lot from papers given on subjects outside my main area of interest.
http://rateyourstudents.blogspot.com/2010/01/morose-and-middle-aged-mark-from-mantua_8201.html
I enjoy conferences; it's the travel part I can't stand. After doing two this year, I decided not to do another one until Super Specialized In My Field Conference is held in 2012. I loved meeting the superstars of my (secondary) field, but I was exhausted by the end and never seemed to have enough time to recover before I was back in front of a classroom.
ReplyDeleteI love small specialized conferences and hate the big blobby ones where everyone is staring at your nametag and averting their eyes if you don't rank, or sucking up if you do (MLA, I'm talking to YOU).
ReplyDeleteConferences are like sex. If you attend a good one, it can be an incredible experience. A bad one makes you want to slink home and pretend it never happened.
ReplyDeleteThe best conferences for me are ones with interactivity. I like panel discussions with audience questions, workshops, and small-group activities. I will not sit through a presentation that consists of someone's reading a paper or PowerPoint slides to me. I wouldn't inflict that on my students; why do colleagues think anyone wants to be taught that way? Like Marcia, I prefer smaller conferences where I can get to know people and be focused on a specific topic. But even larger ones can be fun if the buffet of topics is broad enough to give me lots of different perspectives and the presentations are interesting.
Chalk up another vote for small, specialized conferences; much, much better than the MLA (but then anything's got to be better than the MLA).
ReplyDeleteBut I have to admit that when I read the title of the post, I thought of student conferences ('tis the season, for those of us who teach composition). Actually, the two kinds of conferences have some similarities: a format with a lot of promise for effective interaction, which occasionally lives up to that promise, in which case it is exhausting and exhilarating, but all too often falls short, in which case it is exhausting and discouraging.
@Prof and Circumstance: I don't deal very well with administrator-cheerleaders either, nor do I do my best thinking in groups (mulling over the topics broached afterward, yes, sometimes; in the moment, rarely). Like you, I need to remind myself to give the administrator-cheerleaders what they want (not the truth).
Quite a few of you seem to have good experiences in conferences, but none of you are being very specific. Maybe this is to protect your discipline identities. But I still wait for something strictly conference-related as a counterpoint to my own experiences.
ReplyDeleteAre some academics willing to keep charm on during their presentations? Have you been to conferences where egos are left at the door? Because it's my experience that academics aren't really good with that.
Maybe I'm just being cynical.
@Academic Monkey: I think I can say that the female-run and/or -focused conferences (e.g. women's studies, literature by women) I've attended have, on average, been considerably more cooperative, and less ego-infused, than the co-ed ones (though of course such conferences do have male participants, the great majority of whom fit in with the general vibe, and a few female ones who don't). Presentation quality still varies. It definitely helps if a good number of the listeners, as well as the presenter, are knowledgeable and passionate about the material being discussed; that spark can enliven even the standard read-from-the-paper-trying-to-cut-two-pages-as-you-go-and-add-another-three-in-asides-and-get-cut-off-before-the-end presentation.
ReplyDeleteI confess that I'm one of the Pollyannas here: I generally lurve conferences. But I only go to field-specific ones, and usually only one or maybe two a year (this keeps my writing on track - more and it's just a distraction). I met one of my very good friends at a conference; I love hearing (in casual conversation more often than in a formal presentation) what people in my field are thinking about; once in a while I hear a paper that really blows me away; I'm still junior enough that the total immersion in my field for a few days just makes me happy; I like drinking with people who laugh at my dorky jokes. All totally worth the fear and embarrassment of giving a paper.
ReplyDelete"Why do academics turn OFF their charm while presenting?!"
ReplyDeleteBecause colleagues who are stiff as a bored tell you to knock off the charm, and the joking, and the conversation style, and the sense you are having fun. A colleague told me to knock it off after I presented a paper. At the time, I was a PhD candidate so I listened.
I became so dull that I bored myself during my own presentation. Now that I have a job and three letters after my name, I reverted to my former style. After each presentation, at least one person will say how much they enjoy my presentation style.
How about that?
As to the rest of it, I loathe the big, national conference to the point that I stopped going. I spend my time at a smaller conference with faculty from similar institutions, facing the same challenges that I am.
I like small, local or field-specific conferences but I think the most important thing is, avoid the large conferences that are also (primarily?) used as job markets. In those, half the people there are terrified, because interviewing, and the other half are conducting the interviews, missing all the good sessions because they're doing that, and are cranky. Nobody is in a good mood.
ReplyDeleteBut small conferences either on a specific subject or in a specific geographic area are invariably (in my experience) lots of fun. The papers are as good or (usually) much better, the presentation style is more relaxed, people are actually willing to ask questions, presenters are willing to take risks.