Category Archives: Conferences

Even at a conference, you’ve got to eat!

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Hey, for those of you coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, don’t forget to sign up for the dinners! There’s one big group dinner on Friday, January 19, from 7 to 10 PM, and a bunch of group dinners on Saturday, January 20, right after the official conclusion of the conference.

You know you’ll have fun sharing a meal with other conference attendees, some of whom you may only know through the screen. Make a date to meet them in the three-dimensional world.

For those of you who really like planning your trips, many of the restaurants in question have their menus online. Yes, I’ve already decided what I’m getting both nights. I don’t want to risk missing some good conversation while my head is buried in a menu!

Helping you plan your January 2007.

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If you’re ready to admit that we’re almost done with 2006 and that it might be OK to start making plans for 2007, check your calendar and think about coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, a “free, open and public event for scientists, educators, students, journalists, bloggers and anyone interested in discussing science communication, education and literacy on the Web.”
(more after the break)

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The dangers of reading a paper at a conference.

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Chad Orzel has an excellent post up about good ways to use PowerPoint for a presentation. In a similar vein, I’d like to offer some reasons for academics in disciplines (like philosophy) in which it is the convention to read papers to each other at professional meetings to consider breaking with tradition and not just reading the papers they are presenting.
First, for those of you in science-y fields puzzling over that last sentence: Yes, a great many philosophers really do go places and read their papers to other philosophers. Yes, when I saw it the first time, coming to philosophy via chemistry where people don’t do this, it confused the heck out of me, too. The setting in which this manner of presentation struck me as the most misguided was in department colloquia where the speaker had sent a copy of the paper ahead so that people had time to read it — and indeed, many people in attendance had photocopies of the paper with them at the colloquium — and yet, the speaker still read the paper to these presumably literate members of the audience!
Academic philosophers are a funny bunch, and a complete analysis of their customs is beyond the scope of this post. My goal for the moment is to urge examination of this particular custom — and some of its pitfalls — in the hopes that it may lead to more productive communication at future conferences and colloquia. (Am I looking out for my own interests as a person in the audience for philosophy presentations? You’re darn tootin’!)

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A backward glance at PSA 2006

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ScienceBloggers meet in the three-dimensional world: (from left) Janet Stemwedel, John Lynch, Prof. Steve Steve, John Wilkins, David Ng, Ben Cohen.
I managed to get back home last night from the PSA meeting in Vancouver, although just barely. My co-symposiasts got a rental car and headed off to see mountains, an expedition I’d have joined were it not for my plane-missing paranoia. (“You realize that flying home from Vancouver is essentially a domestic flight, so you probably don’t need to check in until about 90 minutes before flight time,” the field trip organizer assured me. But I know what I worry about, rational or not.) Given that the hotel had pretty much cleared of philosophers and historians, I got bored enough hanging around in the lobby that I ended up catching an earlier airport shuttle, which proceeded to get stuck in traffic. No matter, I was still at the airline check-in kiosk 2.5 hours before my scheduled departure time.
And then the kiosk informed me that my flight had been cancelled. AAAAAAAIIEEEEEE!!
One of the remaining human gate agents was able to work out how to get me booked through to another Bay Area airport as my final destination. “But,” she said, “your flight out of here departs in 30 minutes, so you’re going to have to hustle!” Through customs, through security, to a gate in the hinterlands that required that I run across a large connecting tube, down a flight of stairs, across another large stretch, up a flight of stairs, and then a little further to the gate (carrying my coat and shoes the whole time, of course). But I made it.
Off the top of my travel-tired head, here are some observations from this year’s conference:

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Panda and philosophers meet paparazzi.

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Guest Blogger: Prof. Steve Steve

My adventures with John Wilkins at the PSA meeting in Vancouver continue. Last evening, Wilkins brought me to a reception where I had the pleasure of mingling with a great many philosophers who have made philosophical studies of various aspects of evolutionary biology. Strangely, these minglings were punctuated with camera flashes. Here I am trying to have a word with Robert Brandon as the paparazzi close in on us.

Here I am trying to catch up with Roberta Millstein (who blogged at the much-missed Philosophy of Biology) about her recent move to UC Davis. Once again, some interloper with a camera decided to butt in. How do philosophers manage to carry on a conversation with distractions like these? (Why, for that matter, were there paparazzi in a gathering of academic philosophers?)

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A panda’s-eye view of the PSA.

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Guest Blogger: Prof. Steve Steve

My esteemed Panda’s Thumb colleague John Wilkins invited me to attend the PSA meeting in Vancouver. It seemed like a good idea at the time, so I agreed.
Last evening started pleasantly enough. I met Wilkins, John Lynch, Ben Cohen and David Ng, and Janet Stemwedel (from whose blog I am writing to you now) for refreshments. Yes, there was a bit of confusion when it turned out that the hotel didn’t have an ice machine on every floor. As well, there was the puzzle of how properly to utilize the fresh limes for beverages in the absence of a knife. (The solution: quick and forceful jabs with a house-key. There was no suitably clever solution to the puzzle of how to extract a cork without a corkscrew, however, so the wine remained in its bottle.) Still, there was lively conversation and good cheer.

After the ScienceBloggers confab, we joined the larger conference reception, where I greeted an important philosopher of science:

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To Canada I will go with pockets a-jingling.

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So, I’m getting ready to go to Vancouver, BC, next week for the Philosophy of Science Association meeting (which coincides with the Society for Social Studies of Science meeting and the History of Science Society meeting). And I’m really jazzed that I’ll get to meet John Lynch and John Wilkins and Ben Cohen and David Ng in the three-dimensional world.
But I’m also psyched that I’m going to be able to get rid of all the Canadian coinage that has found its way into my hands over the last several years.*

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Some reflections on conferences.

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This is my first full day back post-BCCE (owing to a brief leisure-related detour through Santa Barbara). I am trying to dial down my coffee dependence (since I was getting my wireless where fine coffee was sold — so I maybe overdid it a little), and my body doesn’t really know what time zone it’s in — so this is probably as good a time as any for some reflections on the BCCE in particular, and on conferences in general.

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Online chemistry resources from the Journal of Chemical Education.

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Another dispatch from the BCCE:
The Journal of Chemical Education (or J Chem Ed, as we call it in the biz), is, in fact, targeted to an audience of chemical educators. Its website has the online version of the journal, plus some resources for teachers of chemistry at the <a href="http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/HS/index.htmlhigh school and college levels.
But, it also has a passel of goodies that anyone with even a passing interest in chemistry can love.

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