At the end of last month, I went to a conference in Marseilles in the South of France. As these conferences go, it went. It was not the worst I have ever attended. It was not the best. On evolution, it lasted four days, and basically consisted of one paper after another—some good, some less so—delivered at high speed in a limited space of time. To use a metaphor that the philosopher Gilbert Ryle once used about the literary style of one of my colleagues—many short sentences, crammed one after another—it was all a little bit like eating peanuts to a metronome.
There was of course a reason for the format. In Europe, as in America, if you don’t give a paper, you cannot get money to go to a conference. So everyone gets to give a paper, and the program is jammed full to accommodate all of the presenters. At least this French conference was not as bad as is promised (threatened?) by the upcoming conference in my two main areas of scholarship. I like the history of science. I like the philosophy of science. But I recognize that these are somewhat restricted areas of interest. They are minor pimples on the fair body of academia, compared say to American literature or European history. Yet, in Montreal next month at the combined meeting of the two main associations for the history and the philosophy of science, the paper giving has reached humungous proportions.
I kid you not. The historians start off on Friday morning with 10 concurrent sessions, each with four or five presentations. The philosophers are slightly behind with seven concurrent sessions, although they are getting off to a faster start with seven more sessions on the Thursday afternoon. So understand. On Friday morning at 9 you have to choose between 17 concurrent sessions—I assume since the associations are meeting together there is intended to be some intellectual crossover—and then at 9:30 you have to hurl yourself from one room to another in the hotel to get to the next paper of your choice. All a little bit like those frenetic games we used to play at birthday parties when I was a child.
The simple fact is that scholarship is not being served. First, a lot of us just don’t go to these things anymore. More senior people look at the program and blench. Save the money for something else. So right there, there is a loss. More junior people don’t get the opportunity to meet and mix with more senior people in the field. I can still remember what a thrill it was when I found myself having supper with Carl Hempel and Ernest Nagel, two of the very biggest names in the philosophy of science in the 1960s, and what an even bigger thrill it was to find that they were genuinely kind and modest men, who spent most of the meal asking me and a couple of other juniors about our work and careers.
Then plenary sessions, where two or three cutting- edge scholars interact over important topics or issues, get downgraded. Not things that we can all attend because there is so much else. Some societies I am involved with have done away with plenary sessions entirely. Not enough time or space. Again this is a massive loss. I can still remember at the first philosophy of science conference I attended how there was a session on biology and how I came away tremendously inspired, intending (as I did) to make this area of the field my specialty and topic of expertise.
And the sessions today themselves too often consist of an audience of 10 or less—often made up primarily of fellow students of the presenters. Of course I am not saying it never happens, but junior scholars simply don’t get the feedback from more senior scholars that would make the experience truly meaningful.
What is to be done? The most obvious thing is to divorce paper giving from conference support. Give everyone in the department a fixed sum and tell them to spend it as they will. The unfair thing is that someone like me with a named chair and a little cash attached to it is already in such a position. I give lots of papers, but I do so when I want to and not of necessity.
My prediction is that this could do wonders for major conferences. We could go back to having meaningful plenary sessions and the contributed papers could be properly refereed. Having a paper accepted at such a conference could be significant for the person presenting and also as a sign to the outside world that this person is giving a quality paper. Without intending to be immodest, I still remember my first paper being accepted, how it was such a confidence booster for me, and a note to my colleagues that their faith in me was not misplaced. (I will tell you sometime about what an appalling job I did as a student and how my colleagues at the university where I ended up showed faith beyond praise in me and my abilities.)
But what about junior people, these days especially grad students who need to boost up their CV’s? Well, already we have regional societies that could play that role more and more. And the major societies could get involved, with regional meetings, asking two or three senior scholars to attend, to give presentations, and to go to the papers of the junior presenters. That way the juniors could give papers and get decent feedback.
In conclusion, let me say that I am not writing this piece with great confidence in my own suggestions. I do think there is a major problem. I realize that any real progress is going to require more money and more effort. Is there ever going to be the money, are people ever going to make the effort? I don’t really know. And so in the spirit of the best conferences, I invite others to stand up and tear my thinking apart. But be constructive. You tell us what we should do.
16 Responses to Why I Hate Conferences
goxewu - October 9, 2010 at 10:42 am
Most conferences are relics of pre-computer, pre-Internet, pre-digital times: all those academics spending all that university money (airfare, hotels, per diems), leaving all those big carbon footprints to do (presenting papers, eliciting comments) what can very well be accomplished today electronically.Why do they persist? a) Free trips to, if not exotic (as Marseilles would be to most), at least far-flung places; b) Schmoozing, sub rosa job-hunting, and trolling for lecture opportunities; c) Partying (at least the academics’ level of it) and a chance, however slim, at a hotel-room tumble with someone just met; d) C.V. padding and a chance to stroll the department halls with an “I’m just back from Marseilles” (or wherever) look on one’s face.The solution? For safely tenured professors such as Michael Ruse: don’t go; simply don’t go. They don’t have to, and they know that conferences are boondoggles, so there’s no good reason for them to go. For untenured faculty? That’s a tough one, because the tenured boys and girls seem to be able to keep the conference boondoggle going, and if untenured faculty want to stuff their C.V.s (not an entirely honorable motive), they have to play along.
macheath - October 10, 2010 at 7:28 pm
Well, we heard awhile ago from Professor Ruse how glad he was to keep working up to and past seventy, blocking jobs for younger faculty (including the new Ph.Ds his department and others are busily minting). Today we hear what a drag it is to go to Marseilles on the university or someone else’s dime, and it is so crowded! His solution? Turn the conferences into events for senior faculty like him? Solution? As Gowexu says, don’t go. Free up sessions for junior faculty (if indeed the conference presentation are really essential to building their cv’s.) Or be sure your department and university funds are used to send the junior faculty, and have senior, tenured faculty like Ruse pay for their trips themselves.
englishwlu - October 11, 2010 at 7:09 am
Just two days ago I was chatting with a fellow senior scholar in a contiguous field about a colleague of mine, about to publish his first book in senior scholar’s series at an excellent university press. “I got interested in his work,” says senior scholar, “when I heard him give a paper at XXXX conference a few years’ back.” The conference was a specialized gathering, with sufficient slots for grad students, junior faculty, and relative unknowns to present work.” This verifies the old story about the benefit of presenting work in progress at conferences: it wouldn’t work if senior scholar just stays home.
I think senior faculty prominent in their fields have an obligation regularly to attend a couple of conferences a year and while there, ATTEND.
goxewu - October 11, 2010 at 7:33 am
Re englishwlu:
“Senior scholar’s” getting interested in englishwlu’s colleague’s work could just as well, and much more efficiently, have taken place via snail mail, phone, e-mail, Internet, videoconferencing, etc. How many conferences did “senior scholar” have to attend–i.e., how many tens of thousands of dollars (of school money?) and weeks of time did he/she have to spend–in order to find a couple of people’s work (or even the work of just one) worth publishing?
Note that the exchange on conferences in this post and thread somehow doesn’t require a conference for it to take place.
Kids, can you spell b-o-o-n-d-o-g-g-l-e? If you can’t, read David Lodge’s novel of academe, “Small World.”
fgmart - October 11, 2010 at 7:53 am
In computer science, there are many small specialized conferences that are highly selective (paper acceptance rates of 25% or less). People of all ranks, and non-authors, come to these for the reasons the author mentions in his early days: good conversation and collegiality.
There are big, everyone-presents-in-fancy-locale conferences, but these are put on by for-profit shops and are easy to avoid.
I’m saddened to hear the lack of small, high-quality venues in other fields.
gsmagee - October 11, 2010 at 10:01 am
Interesting comments. In less funded sectors of academe–humanities, arts, etc.–we have to pay some or all expenses out of pocket. So conferences are becoming a “pay to play” system in which those who can afford to attend and give papers work their way up the ladder, and the rest choose between groceries and overpriced hotel rooms. The imbalance disenfranchises young and minority scholars. Add to that a lack of quality childcare, which hits two-career, young families and–quite frankly–female scholars particularly hard, and the conference system looks pretty exclusionary.
willynilly - October 11, 2010 at 11:00 am
You want a reduced teaching load. You want reduced office hours. You want fewer meetings. You want to attend fewer conferences. You have made me curious: What is it that you want to do besides cash your pay check?
cwinton - October 11, 2010 at 11:10 am
As fgmart has noted, fast moving disciplines like computer science have evolved more narrowly focused and selective conferences and symposia that exercise real care with their programs. Note that these folks, who actually understand the limitations of modern communications technology, recognize the value of in person meetings for keeping abreast of developments in the field. It has long been recognized in computer science in particular, that a publication/presentation at one of these kinds of meetings is a significant marker of research activity. Perhaps the organizations Mr. Ruse belongs to, and their counterparts, should take a look at how these disciplines are organizing meetings and take a page from them.
amandafrench - October 11, 2010 at 12:10 pm
I’ve never been a senior scholar in my discipline, but it’s definitely true that as a grad student and then adjunct in English literature, going to conferences started to feel like it was corroding my intellectual integrity, since there was so little real intellectual exchange. I found myself going to almost any conference I could get into, willy-nilly, spending money I couldn’t afford, only to get a line on my CV. Sometimes, yes, I did encounter great new ideas and meet great new people whose ideas were important to me, but all too infrequently.
Increasing exasperation with the problems outlined in this article is probably why I’m being kept on my toes as “THATCamp Coordinator” for the Center for History and New Media. I don’t want to advertise or proselytise here, but then again, I’m not selling anything, so I’ll mention that the “unconference” THATCamp (The Humanities And Technology Camp) is spreading like kudzu around the world because
1) There are no presentations or papers
2) It’s small (usually 50-100 people)
3) It’s free (entirely free, usually with a suggested donation of $25)
4) It’s attended by people from many disciplines and many ranks
The emphasis at THATCamp is always on meeting people and talking and working with them, not on reading in a drone for 20 minutes or sitting docile in an expensive windowless hotel conference room. More info at http://thatcamp.org. My own big disciplinary conference, MLA, is interested in incorporating some unconference-like sessions into its agenda — I definitely hope that conference travel award mechanisms learn to keep pace. Note too that we’re offering fellowships to defray the cost of travel: http://thatcamp.org/fellowships
goxewu - October 11, 2010 at 1:37 pm
Question for cwinton: Just what is it about “in-person meetings” that enables one to better “keep abreast with developments in the field”?
Just because technologists think that conferences are essential doesn’t mean–in the absence of any concrete reasons why–they are. Techies are human, and they can rationalize the privilege of padding work with playing/schmoozing/job-networking at a conference as well as anyone.
I can read faster than anyone I know can talk; reading is the best way to get a lot of information, so I’d rather read the paper than hear it. PowerPoint, or similar, makes things worse, not better. There are no politics (“How’d you like my paper?” asks the nice guy whose paper was awful) when I’m alone with my info. Also, there’s an anti-serendipity, too: For every chance conference encounter with somebody really interesting, there are three or four with people who are, to put it bluntly, wastes of my time. (I’m sure I’m a waste of time to somebody else, which only bolsters my anti-conference stance.)
Online, at a videoconference, or even on the phone, I don’t have to waste money (mine or a university’s) on airfare, hotels and (usually bad) restaurant meals, and I don’t have to waste at least a day on either end of a conference for travel time.
A while back, “Brainstorm” blogger Professor John Jackson posted a hand-wringer about conferences similar to Professor Ruse’s. In that thread, the issue of missed class time came up. One of the perqs of conference-going is that one gets to blow off a day, or even two, of teaching, with the school/department’s approval. Even if the attending professor arranges a substitute, it’s not his or her illustrious self in the classroom that day. At times, of course, conferences take place during semester or holiday breaks, but you can be sure the break times don’t match all the attendees’ teaching schedules. And some conscientious professors whip in and out of a close-by conference so that they don’t miss any classes. But, from my experience, they’re a small minority of attendees.
Academics go to conferences for the same reason that male dogs lick a certain part of their anatomies: because they can.
janesdaughter - October 11, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Europeans are not the only faculty who need to present in order to attend. The citizens of my fair state have trouble enough swallowing the need to support higher education with their tax dollars. They are not about to pay professors to go to a conference if all we do is listen to someone else talk. When I submit receipts for reimbursement I also have to hand in a copy of the conference program page with my name on it, or it is my dime.
cwinton - October 11, 2010 at 2:45 pm
In reply to goxewu: I don’t doubt that people in tech areas can be as prone to goofing off as anyone else, but as the old saying goes, seeing is believing, especially when new technology is involved. Putting your hands on it is quite different than reading about it, and these folks are more into demo than reading dry words of wisdom to an audience that anyone could absorb better and faster on their own. Moreover, anything involving technology is advancing apace, and there’s nothing like a meeting for various parties to catch up on what similarly minded colleagues from elsewhere are accomplishing. Could it be done by on-line meeting? For the conference paradigm of the past I think the answer is clearly yes (although not necessarily for lowered costs). For the kinds of things the more technologically oriented folks are interested in, I think the answer at present is clearly no.
goxewu - October 11, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Ain’t it a paradox: To get the latest poop on electronic high tech and its most touted benefit, virtuality, you’ve got to show up in low-tech literal flesh-and-blood at some Hampton Inn. And all because you can’t send anybody digital coffee and muffins.
(OK, I’ll make an exception for certain tech disciplines with more demos than papers. But nobody else, especially in the humanities, should be flying off to Marseilles–France or Illinois–on some school’s tab just to be able, bottom line, to say they did.)
arrive2__net - October 12, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Is your conference glass half empty or half full? If the conference experience is really bad, maybe you should avoid that conference and find another one that better suits your needs. After all, if it really does you and your career no good, you may as well save the money. Or you could try getting into the committees and try to make changes for the better.
Going to a big conference usually involves making a strategy to achieve your goals, if there is no workable strategy or goal, its probably not a conference for you.
Bringing like-minded people in a given academic discipline together is likely to have a lot of impacts, including partying, but the process of organizing, planning, and participating in a professional conference, and getting exposure for your ideas is likely to have some good affects. Conference definitely can have effects on the organization and influence of the field. But it can’t be all things to all people. In my opinion, conferences are one reason to be a scientist or academic … its part of the big picture of enjoying your work and growing in your field.
Bernard Schuster
Arrive2.net
esagor - October 14, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Glad to see more conferences going to online formats, or at least making that option available. Two recent examples: http://www.iated.org/inted2011/ and, appropriately enough, A symposium on working differently: http://about.extension.org/2010/10/05/outstanding-keynotes-critical-conversations-featured-in-national-extension-virtual-conference/
-eli
williamjmoner - October 14, 2010 at 6:29 pm
I’d also like to add the Flow TV and Media Studies Conference to the list of alternative formats. The conference is hosted at the University of Texas at Austin every two years. Our latest conference was held in early October and was well received.
More information can be found here:
http://flowtv.org/conference/
The conference is a series of roundtable discussions with topics created by Flow columnists, organized around the future of television and media culture and scholarship.
The goal is conversation. There are no plenary sessions and participants are asked to submit short position papers (not full-length essays). The conference is designed to promote discussion amongst scholars, members of the media industries, media activists, fans, and policy-makers over crucial issues related to television and media.
The format lends itself nicely to discussions and collegial interaction. Each panelist presents their position (five minutes, maximum) and then the discussion is opened to the audience. I moderated two of the panels at this year’s conference, and I found the discussions to be intellectually stimulating with ample opportunity for audience members to speak their positions, too. In fact, I hardly had to moderate because participants tended to self-regulate. (I did intervene in one or two minor cases in the interest of time and coverage of the topic.)
In fact, one prominent scholar remarked that the Flow Conference was the happiest conference he had ever attended. The attendees seemed genuinely engaged in not only the conference topics but the collegiality of the event. Above all, it was fun, and reminded many of the reasons why they entered academia in the first place: to engage in subject matter that stimulates their intellectual curiosity and provides a forum for structured argumentation.
I’m looking forward to the 2012 conference, and I’d encourage other conferences to experiment with their formats to maximize engagement and discourse. While the Flow Conference might not be a model for all conferences, it certainly supports the idea that non-traditional conference formats (ours, THATCamp, etc.) can lead to fruitful collaboration and generative discussions between participants and panelists.