.Of Conferences, Form and Structure
Conferences: What are they supposed to achieve? Are they worth the investment?
In my undergrad days, Geography students organised annual conferences at different universities. These were frolicking affairs where the Wits students always seemed to be a year ahead of everyone else in terms of cutting-edge paradigmatic fads: quantitative, Marxist, social indicators and poststructuralist. The emphasis was on process and not form.
But we Witsies were given a run for our money by equally innovative Natal University “banana boys and girls” as they were known in those days.
Different universities sported different presenter styles: some utterly formal, some learned by heart and recited, and many read. Our lecturers supportively attended but did not participate.
One young dynamic professor muttered at the exhibition of student work about the neatness and overemphasis on form of the student projects which were purely descriptive, and that had no sense of process or explanation. The Witsies and Natalians were astonished at the level of care, neatness and focus on presentation. For us, it was the idea that counted, no matter how poorly presented. “Process, not form”, the professor muttered as a mantra in our ears.
In China, it is often a question of form: packing sequential 30 presentations into a single day with the obligatory group photo, proving to the bureaucrats that we were there. This linearity turns on ticking the box, capturing delegate presence. Speaking to, rather than speaking with, is the linear preferred communication model. Sometimes one travels across the globe and is allocated a parallel session with four delegates, three of them Spanish-speaking.
At one SA communication conference, no session chairs had been assigned. No discussion and no questions; not anticipated. The students who found themselves by default doing this job were actually data projector operators - a very alienating experience for speakers who wanted to discuss their work. “Any questions?” the students asked. Silence for 10 seconds and they closed the session unless someone from the floor intervened.
Some conferences run parallel sessions for students. One such in which UKZN students attended was interrupted by them after the second presentation as no time had been allocated to questions or discussion. To the astonishment of their peers, they re-organised the schedule, insisted on discussion periods and reassigned the chairing to students.
Then one has to deal with folks who don’t structure their talks. They just waste everyone’s time gabbling away, made worse by chairs who don’t chair. Time and structure mean nothing to such delegates who reveal their ignorance.
In contrast are the very expensive, commercially organised industry-related conferences in Johannesburg where presenters are very well prepared, stick to time, make an impact, and possibly pick up a client or two. No theory here, but a great learning experience.
When UKZN organised the massive 2012 International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) conference, the only venue big enough other than the ICC to schedule 36 parallel sessions was Howard College. Audio visual services had to be imported, every Southern Sun bed booked, buses contracted and Wi-Fi provided. Facilities Management cleaned up Shepstone and refurbished the toilets and assigned security to ensure that students did not liberate all the toilet paper. One pre-condition by the IAMCR Executive was quality filter coffee. So, the coffee aficionados from the ICC were contracted. So good was the coffee that the queues snaked for long periods, sometimes transgressing the actual session slots.
Forty students volunteered to assist in organisation, operating the AV equipment, herding delegates between Shepstone and MTB, ensuring that the chairs were on the job. On occasion they even mucked in to assist the sometimes-overwhelmed campus lunch providers who clearly had no experience in serving 700 delegates in just one hour.
The student helpers at their own initiative choreographed a dance at the bottom of Shepstone 1 for the last session just before the very testy AGM. The performance was a fusion of Zulu, Indian and Western styles, and they danced their way up both aisles and out of the theatre. While most delegates applauded a few Northerners were heard to complain that this exhibition was not ‘African’. No doubt these were the same chumps who had voiced their displeasure at the magnificence of the Music School’s Three Tenors who performed at the SABC sponsored banquet at the Elangeni Hotel. But they did not complain about the free food or the drink!
Various kinds of personalities can be identified as conferees:
• parachuters who drop in and out, tick the box, learn little, but ensure their exposure on the programme
• whiners who always seem to miss the conference arrival desk at the airport, miss the bus, hate the food, complain about the fees, but who want top accommodation, quality coffee and for someone else to subsidise their registration fee. They also complain about the slot allocated them and insist that everyone else be inconvenienced so that they can miss the final day
• sound boxes who just love hearing their own voices as they dominate discussion time.
• evangelists who want to save the rest of us
• hoggers who consume other presenters’ time because they can’t or refuse to keep to time
• interlopers who simply turn up without applying, registering or paying. They then complain loudly that they are being ‘mistreated’ when turned away or asked to pay
On the other hand, there are the
• Hard working and selfless conference organisers who make things happen for the common good. This is known as academic citizenship
• Delegates who come to learn, add intellectual value, make the event a success and memorable
• Networking and collaborative opportunities that create interinstitutional capacity and build international relationships
• Folks who are looking for jobs and those doing recruitment
• Branding exposure opportunities for the host institution
• Delegates who engage their peers in debate and who use conferences to test ideas rather than display them, and
• The bittereinders who ensure that the last speakers during the last session of the last day have someone to talk with
Conferences are worth the investment if they are used for debate, networking, collaboration and branding.
Keyan G Tomaselli is Distinguished Professor at the University of Johannesburg, and is a UKZN Professor Emeritus.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column are the author’s own.