I wanted to write a message on this topic earlier but had to go to a dissertation defense and now I see that a lot of the points I had have already been raised but I feel they need to be summarized in a constructive manner. I think it is great that we are raising the issue here and have a discussion. I sympathise with both sides of the argument.
Over the past years I have tried to practice what we preach and have only attended ISA every other year to minimise my environmental impact. Professionally, I feel that I miss out for all the reasons already mentioned here. I feel more disconnected from people and from the field and miss those discussions. No online chat room, webinar or whatever is going to make up for that face to face interaction. Also, Wil is right that universities are slashing their budgets out of nessicity and only the lucky ones still get research support from their institutions so conference attendance will be harder for those with lower salaries, competing financial commitments or from non-OECD countries etc. It is time to think about alternatives that give us the same or similar professional benefit without the environmental cost attached to it. I think a bi-annual conference is a good way forward and attempts to make regional conferences more pertinent and attractive as already mentioned several times. This should be coupled with technology such as have some of the speakers brought in through electronic communication to make for cohesive and interesting panels. With only one person per panel being there virtually and everybody else in the same room, some of the problems with technology can be overcome without having discussion suffer. It sounds like something like this or something similar is already practiced in Germany and maybe Klaus Jacob could report back on how well this works? I also think this would provide for more egalitarian networking as it makes it easier for students and those with non-existent research support to still have access to panels and discussions and networking. And by regional conferences I mean eg ISA Northeast but also BISA or whatever equivalent there is in Australia/NZ. I am not sure how feasible this would be for colleagues in developing countries but then, for them, attendance at ISA is probably also totally out of reach, especially on an annual basis. This could mean for example that if ISA southwest had a panel for which Lorraine Elliott would be a natural fit, she could be there virtually and she would benefit from being on that panel while the conference attendees would benefit from discussions with her and students would get the chance to meet her. The same could not be achieved in a webinar - the majority of the people have to be there in the flesh for this thing to work. And it would not reduce us to local, or provincial, units but still retain the global connection. In the past, I have not been particularly excited by the offerings in my field at ISA Northeast but there is only one way forward - if there is anybody else out there working in my field who would like to do a panel for ISA Northeast, please contact me and let's lead by example trying to make regional conferences a better forum for us. Gabriela Associate Professor Department of Political Science Rutgers-Newark 360 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd Newark NJ 07102 USA Telephone 973 353 5126 Email: [email protected] ----- Original Message ----- From: Beth DeSombre To: [email protected] Sent: Friday, March 12, 2010 9:59 AM Subject: [gep-ed] Conference greening and the role of conferences I appreciate Mike's effort to keep the list clear of extraneous traffic and relevant to those who are on it, but I actually think that this discussion is precisely the sort of thing that it's useful to have a collective discussion about rather than individual messages to the people on the "greening" committee. And, heck, if we can't do that in the best electronic forum that currently exists for talking about global environmental politics issues, then the idea of substituting electronic communication for some aspects of conferences is definitely a non-starter! I think it's worth discussing here because I think it's about broader issues than Mike and I are going to be looking at, and in that broadness is relevant to the question of what it is that conferences *do*. And in that sense, if anyone on the list attends, or considers attending, any conferences, it's relevant more broadly than to the ISA conference. I am second to none in my appreciation for and use of electronic communication opportunities, and I think they have indeed enriched our academic community and discourse. But I also think that there is a way in which they operate differently than as opportunities to make your latest research available and to get feedback on it. It's the same reason that I think that teaching a class collectively, with people present at the same time in the same room, is a fundamentally different activity than teaching an online class. When I teach I go in with a plan about the information I want to convey. And the act of presenting it to a room full of people changes what I say -- I make connections I didn't imagine I would make in the act of presenting, and present it differently. And that's even before there is discussion -- and, ideally (and often) that discussion, questions that build off each other in real time, leads the conversation to a place that it would never have otherwise gone, and leads me to think about what I'm saying in completely different ways. It happens because we're in the same place at the same time. That's just the presentation/discussion aspect of a conference. Sure, you could find ways to replicate that -- imperfectly (and I honestly think that it would be imperfect) -- but that's also only part of what is valuable about being physically present together at conferences. Part of the reason I think gep-ed works so well is that some of us know others of us -- there's a core of common experience at its base. And that experience expands outwards. But having the hallway discussions, the dinners out, the fortuitous connections that happen at a conference when you run into someone whose electronic site you wouldn't have thought to go visit if we were just talking about an electronic conference, the grad student you happen to be able to hook up for coffee with the person whose work she should know when you see them both in the book room, is what makes conferences worthwhile for me. I agree that as environmentalists we need to think seriously about how to live more sustainably in our world. And conferences are a part of that, and air travel is problematic. But they're one small aspect of what we do in our daily lives, and if you haven't taken steps that are just as drastic to shift the fundamental way we interact with the world (do you take the kids to visit their grandparents? Wouldn't skype be just as good?) I'm not convinced that doing away with conference travel is necessarily the first place I'd start. Beth (who might now be impeached from the conference greening committee!) Elizabeth R. DeSombre Wellesley College
