Conference bingo

Someone who was supposed to read a paper for the conference hasn’t done so

Unidentifiable hors d’ouvre.

Red wine spilled on shirt by wildly gesticulating colleague during drinks reception.

Bestest-friend conference buddy whom you will never, ever see or hear from again.

Pervasive performance-art element to conference due to (over)-involvement of Host University drama department.

‘Theme’ conference dinner with inedible ‘period’ menu.

Cultural capital, as inversely related to economic capital.

Homo Academicus.

As in, Academics re the secular clerics of the postmodern state…

A simpler version is the “discourse sweepstake” in which everybody guesses how often the speaker will use the term “discourse”. This may or may not be rude but it should keep the audience awake.

What about “performance art posing as question during Q&A”?

. . . and don’t forget person dozzing off in back row snoring just loud enough to hear.

I’ve seen this at an urban history conference in Amsterdam, but it was front row and top man in field.

The same man then got left behind from the conference outing.

(As it was in Amsterdam the outing was on foot, so he was able to attempt to catch us up. The excursion was to view a clandestine Roman Catholic chapel dedicated the Virgin Mary built in the roofspace of a merchant’s house during the most enthusiastic phase of the Reformation. By unskilful application of what little Dutch he had, and over-helpful interpretation by English-speaking passers-by, he was directed to a top-floor brothel – can’t see this happening in Boston, though).

During the same conference my roommate was mugged at gunpoint and I had to fund him for the duration of the conference.

Maybe it’s a science conference thing, but I’d add “Language barrier/accent preventing questioner from being understood, requiring at least 2 “would you repeat that” clarifications before the presenter gets embarassed and just decides to answer a question they thing the person could possibly have been asking.”

As far as “Never-ending comment posing as question during Q&A” goes, Kieran already had a Free square.

Also maybe in the too easy to include category, but “nested video in presentation failing to work properly.”

How about, Panelist, when told his/her time is almost up, attempts to summarize fifteen pages in one minute. Or the related, Panelist: “And, for reasons of time, I’ll skip this section”

At one conference I was at, a panelist successfully extended his 20 minute presentation to 50. Every time the chair tentatively waved a “finish” note under his nose, he shouted, excitedly “Cinq minutes! Cinq minutes!” and ploughed on (in French). This left time for one question from the floor, which was asked of the first speaker on the panel (I was number 2, and “cinq minutes” was 3rd). First panelist then disappeared for lunch with a mutual acquaintance who asked how the papers had gone: “Oh, my paper went much better than Chris’s” said no.1, “all the questions were directed at me.”

Surely it’s easier to play on ‘wi-fi _does_ work”?

@16: French people don’t DO 20-min papers, this is a mere anthropological fact, no-one should have been surprised.

It’s true, and it all happened at this conference .

It’s tricky to give details about the snorer, he was, is, a bad-tempered fellow (not one of the listed speakers, incidentally). To help Chris Williams though: I see from Wikipaedia that he left England for the frozen North a long time ago.

The outing was, I now find, to ‘Our Lord in the Attic’ chapel (not the Virgin Mary – which tells against the veracity of the tale that flashed round the conference), which IS in the red light district (and so, on the other hand, speaks for veracity).

On the muggee, though, I can add details: an ex-professional cricketer, in fact international cricketer (albeit Scotland), now a professor at a leading British university. And, as a six-foot-plus athlete it did need a proper revolver, wielded with menace, to separate him from his wallet. Also, a proper gent: he paid me back within hours of our return to the UK.

Appalling to realise it was all so long ago: I recall the whole conference quite clearly. I was there representing a publisher which was on the verge of going under, and had arranged for a specialist academic bookseller in Amsterdam to buy all my unsold display stock at a massive discount at the end of the conference. To save money I took the books out as personal luggage (no RyanAir, no petty weight restrictions in those days), so on my return I was carrying two very light suitcases. Being no mime, I couldn’t trick the sharp eyes at customs and had to open my bags. All that was inside one of them was a few hundred polystyrene beans, used to preserve the books on the trip out, that I hadn’t been able to tip into the litter bins at the IISG in Amsterdam. The customs man raked through the beans, looking for a plastic bag of you-know-what. I then delivered my best-ever line to a uniformed official: ‘I’m smuggling polystyrene.’ Amazingly, I walked away.

Sigh! So true, so true! I haven’t looked at the pdf file yet but here are some of mine, some of which have been mentioned:

>Scholar promoting own work in the guise of asking a question.
>Graduate students & foreign scholars crashing receptions because they don’t have money for meals.
>Presenter giving paper that is on a different topic than the one in the schedule.
>Being the only presenter without overhead projections, PowerPoint or handouts (this is me!).
>The convener who can’t figure out whether to start without the entire panel or wait until that last presenter wanders into the session.
>Someone complaining about two sessions scheduled at the same time that are remotely similar themes.
>Scholars who never leave the lobby/bar area to actually go listen to any of the panels.
>Academics looking for jobs at other universities who attend their receptions instead that for their own school.
>Senior scholar who drunkenly reveals damning personal information about him/herself at a reception, causing a graduate student to carry the burden of a huge secret.
>Male academics who look like they slept in their suits on the red-eye (ever hear of an iron?).
>Ph.D. job seekers who are jumping out of their skin and calling the employment center ever 45 minutes to see if someone has responded to a message left for them.
>The audience member who is overly enthusiastic about your work, takes your email address and then never contacts you…ever. Sometimes at future conferences, this person pretends that you’ve never even met.
>First year graduate students who go to panels with big names scholars who are crushed to find them giving ad-hoc presentations or talking off the top of their heads (they can get away with it!).
>Graduate students who buy too many books and are staying at a cheap hotel who have to drag bags of books around all day/evening until they can get back to their hotel (me, again).
>Sessions on “How to get published” or “How to get hired” that are so crowded people are sitting on the floor.
>Advertised discount prominently posted at exhibitor’s booth but scholar asking for additional discount or freebies. Usually met with a smiling shake of the head by book publisher on duty unless it is a textbook company.

Some of these observations are from other, nonsociology conference environments but I thought I’d throw them in.

I’m working on the last revisions of my dissertation so I can’t be in Boston so I’m counting on y’all to Tweet away…I’ll be checking the backchannels for news!

#17 I’d like some examples so I can know how funny this is.

Well it isn’t that funny, and it depends a lot on subject. At a recent meeting of the American Society for 18th Century Studies, I felt like the only man who wasn’t wearing tweed jacket, tie, brogues, maybe cord trousers, stripy or check (but sober) shirt. The women also v conservatively dressed. Far more than at a typical UK conference.

Suits? Dress codes? Weird. Anyway, how about:

– Bigshot trying to suck up to grad students from host institution… by telling them how much better other schools are.

– group going out for dinner managing to walk around aimlessly for half an hour in precisely the one tiny area of town where no food can be had.

– VIP planning to fly in and out on same day arriving late to say “hello, can’t make my presentation, so sorry” and immediately proceeding to take cab back to airport.

I’m a mathematician, is all. We look all over the place at conferences,

Long-assed introduction of self in an effort to broadcast one’s work/availability/awesomeness to panel audience before asking a truly banal question that shows that wasn’t the point?
.

26: >Senior scholar who drunkenly reveals damning personal information about him/herself at a reception, causing a graduate student to carry the burden of a huge secret.

My experience, as a non-grad student who hangs out with grad students, is that such burdens are carried neither very long nor very far.

But can you beat:

1. panel convener wrestles with audience member for microphone because he doesn’t like the question
2. “this is a very busy graph, I know, but…”

“disco-dancing impressively well” – is that possible? I mean, in an absolute sense, as opposed to “quite mobile for her/his age”?

Not an academic, so all I know about academic conferences I learned from reading Small World by David Lodge.

It occurred to me that you could do an advanced board on which all the squares are occupied by things that happened in Small World (e.g., “Abducted by fantastically wealthy and cultivated Marxist for sexual threesome with her husband.”)

Here’s another one from PhD Comics: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=847 Some squares have to be modified though to fit philosophy seminars.

Attendees attaching ribbons of various offices and sections to their name badge in inverse proportion to their importance in the discipline. (This is probably another one that could just count as free.)

The most fun I ever had at the ASA was in Philadelphia. I ate gelato like 3 times a day at the place around the corner from the hotel, and I stayed out until 2:30 at a Knitters concert, which was fabulous.