I have two academic conferences in the coming weeks (CLASP and AoIR). Both should be great fun. But they will only nominally be about Ideas, according to Thomas Strong’s post at Savage Minds. Which, however brutal it seems, I have to agree with about 85% of (based on my very limited conference-going experience). To quote Hipster Olympics, “so ironic it’s not, so unironic it is.”
Actually, I think interdisciplinary conferences like AoIR avoid this kind of obvious non-Ideas showiness to a great extent. It’s not immediately clear, career-wise, why I should care whether someone in performance studies or data security knows or cares who I am, for instance. But it’s very nice to hear what they’ve been thinking about. Maybe this is why AoIR always feels so productive to me: I actually feel like most people are there to listen and learn, because they know very little about what 80% of the other people are talking about.
I pulled those percentages out of my ass, btw.
I think it depends on the conference. I go to two conferences annually — the American Sociological Association meetings and the Population Association of America meetings — the first is huge and tied up almost exclusively in these status games but the second there is actually a lot of interaction between faculty members and graduate students. I actually really like the PAA because senior faculty members will come up and talk to you about your paper and such.
BUT, what I did find helpful was meeting people through AGEL and CGEU and grad labor conferences. Then, I get to see people I would otherwise only get to see once or twice a year at those conferences, too.
Comment by Mike3550 — October 2, 2007 @ 10:38 pm
I’ve never been to an academic conference, but I did do some research on the blogosphere back in the day, and when I surveyed the current scholarship I came away impressed by the number of AoIR papers that were being cited. People are definitely listening and learning — and as far as my little research corner went, they were listening with good reason.
Comment by Dan — October 2, 2007 @ 11:02 pm