The Conference Junkie
An essential component of academic life is attending conferences. They are the opportunity we have of putting our ideas to the test, of learning from others, of having our views challenged, of getting together with colleagues we may collaborate with in the future, all in a concentrated time and space. Some conferences are very large and encompass the whole range of sub-fields of a discipline, e.g. the LSA Annual Meeting, where you can hear presentations from Historical Linguistics to Neurolinguistics and everything in between. Others, have a much more focused and specific topic area to cover, e.g. CARLA or CABE 2019, and others have an international professional focus, such as TESOL 2019 and yet others may not large at all but are meetings of people working on a particular project or programme, and may not be open or accessible to the general public.
The quality of a conferences is not given by the number of attendees (some are very large, some can be very small), the beauty of the venue (some are set in splendid buildings and cities, others in more modest environments like a few classrooms in a university), or the type of exhibitors or sponsors they may have (in fact some of the best conferences pay so little attention to this aspect that they only assign exhibitors a few tables in a hallway, and that is just fine with everyone). No, the quality of a conference resides in what you learn and what you think about during the sessions you attend and with the people you interact with. Even the change in geography afforded by attending a conference is an important contribution to the conference experience. On the one hand, you are free of the usual responsibilities and expectations of your home city, but also, you are necessarily confronted with what is different. Usually the venues provide opportunities to visit museums and other sites that you would otherwise not have the chance or time to visit. The very displacement situation is an enriching one. These are some interesting places I visited when attending a conference in New York City last week:
Many years ago (over 20, I think), I wrote a little article for ELT News & Views, on what teachers can do as part of professional development and, of course, conferences were a prominent item in that listing of options.The article didn't allow for me to expand on how people, particularly teachers, should take advantage of attending a conference and, over the years, I've seen some better and some worse practices in this respect. Of course, there is not only one good way of doing things when attending a conference, but I think there is probably some room for providing some advice, especially to young teachers and other language professionals, on how to best take advantage of these opportunities. Some people have, so we can take advantage of their hard work:
Increasingly, it is possible to access the main sessions of a conference online, e.g. the LSA Annual Meeting, which is a great way of taking a peak into what goes on. The experience is not the same as being immersed in the conference spirit and being able to interact with colleagues, old and new, but it is certainly a wonderful opportunity we have to learn what happened if we cannot attend in person.
The quality of a conferences is not given by the number of attendees (some are very large, some can be very small), the beauty of the venue (some are set in splendid buildings and cities, others in more modest environments like a few classrooms in a university), or the type of exhibitors or sponsors they may have (in fact some of the best conferences pay so little attention to this aspect that they only assign exhibitors a few tables in a hallway, and that is just fine with everyone). No, the quality of a conference resides in what you learn and what you think about during the sessions you attend and with the people you interact with. Even the change in geography afforded by attending a conference is an important contribution to the conference experience. On the one hand, you are free of the usual responsibilities and expectations of your home city, but also, you are necessarily confronted with what is different. Usually the venues provide opportunities to visit museums and other sites that you would otherwise not have the chance or time to visit. The very displacement situation is an enriching one. These are some interesting places I visited when attending a conference in New York City last week:
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Many years ago (over 20, I think), I wrote a little article for ELT News & Views, on what teachers can do as part of professional development and, of course, conferences were a prominent item in that listing of options.The article didn't allow for me to expand on how people, particularly teachers, should take advantage of attending a conference and, over the years, I've seen some better and some worse practices in this respect. Of course, there is not only one good way of doing things when attending a conference, but I think there is probably some room for providing some advice, especially to young teachers and other language professionals, on how to best take advantage of these opportunities. Some people have, so we can take advantage of their hard work:
Increasingly, it is possible to access the main sessions of a conference online, e.g. the LSA Annual Meeting, which is a great way of taking a peak into what goes on. The experience is not the same as being immersed in the conference spirit and being able to interact with colleagues, old and new, but it is certainly a wonderful opportunity we have to learn what happened if we cannot attend in person.
Great, Cris! Many thanks for sharing!!!
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