Even for a one-day conference, PMB is highly skeptical about the ability of participants to productively engage with the content of presentations (paper after paper after paper). Particularly in the humanities, for which conventional delivery means literally reading a scholarly paper for 20-60 minutes and taking questions afterward, the amount of mental energy required to really stick with and think actively about someone's ideas for long periods of time (and then do it over again in the next session, paper after paper after paper) is daunting. For one, having someone read to you or talk at you for an hour is probably not the best way to transmit information, particularly information that relies on considerable attention to detail and sorting of complexity. Also, it would seem our attention span is not particularly suitable for the conventional conference presentation. There is always a new study detailing how quickly into an hour-long talk audience members begin to tune out, then to start thinking about sex. Now that technological distractions are possible, we have a slew of studies on the prevalence and uses of things like Twitter during conference presentations. If anything, the conference Twittering phenomenon suggests that people are looking for new ways to actively engage with the material being presented, and in many cases benefiting from such engagement.
PMB actually enjoys conferences, even though sometimes he begins thinking more about his own research than the research being presented, once launched off onto a thought-tangent (not necessarily a bad thing). But he would like to take some time to begin thinking about better ways of doing conferences. Here are some first proposals, admittedly geared primarily toward humanities conferences:
1) Drastically reduce the number of conference papers at a conference. Hold less than a handful of plenary sessions on broader topics (in relation to the conference topic) that touch on smaller topics (beneath the umbrella of the conference topic).
2) In accordance with 1, shift the emphasis of the conference from the conference paper or presentation to the mediated panel discussion. Develop a series of panels with pre-identified discussion topics. Assign a chair or co-chairs to each panel with some demonstrable degree of expertise in the subfield or subtopic that the panel is to address. Encourage scholars to come prepared with their own notes and references for the discussion to facilitate more specific and content-driven discussion.
3) Have conference attendees write a paper for the conference just as they do now, but have the paper available in digital format, organized by topic, for attendees to read rather than listen to. This admittedly causes a couple of problems re. preparation of digital materials (extra work for conference organizers) and opportunities for plagiarism of unpublished work. This idea needs work; though mainly it's aimed at providing a more efficient way of consuming the information in scholarly papers (reading) while allowing scholars to share work that hasn't yet been published (very important).
4) Networking is almost always one of the focal points of a conference, though we pretend that it's only a positive externality, a consequence of people getting together to read and listen to papers. Make the networking aspect of the conference more explicit by organizing meet-and-greet or informal discussion sessions for participants by research topic. Rely less on academic cliques deciding on their own terms to take the discussion to the local bar or restaurant.
These are some quick stabs at conference reform that PMB hopes to revise and reconsider at another time.
