Dr. Casey FieslerApr 23, 2024

Here's today's academic hot take. The way we run conferences is absolutely wild. Can you imagine if a company had 100% employee turnover every year and all they had to rely on was (if you're lucky) some documentation, or having to reach out to the person who previously had your job which you then feel bad about because they don't work there anymore?

Also the fact that anyone thinks professors should be event planners.

Show threadDr. Casey FieslerApr 23, 2024

This hot take is brought to you by someone who co-chaired two different conferences last year. And now that I think I actually kind of know how to do it, I probably never will again. (Or it will be in like 10 years when somehow I get talked in to CHI. Probably not though.)

I will say that the larger conference (~800 people) had a couple of paid helpers who knew what they were doing re: components of the event planning stuff. The smaller (< 100) literally had me picking out the food.

Show threadDr. Casey FieslerApr 23, 2024
I'll note that one partial solution to part of this problem is staggered positions, which some conferences do for all or some organizing positions. But it is a HUGE ask for someone to do these things for more than one year in a row. (So I understand when people declined when I tried to make this happen.) Like yes, professional service is sometimes officially part of academics' jobs, but it's not like other things stop. i.e., you don't get a teaching release for chairing a conference.
Show threadMarty J. Wolf
@cfiesler You are so spot on. I did it once, but not again for the reasons you listed. I was further constrained in that I didn't have any sort of budgetary control and it was in a city and country I had never been to.
Apr 23, 2024 at 1:07pmWeb