A league of their own
I’m not sure why, but whenever I hear the words ‘MA Conference‘ my heart sinks, and my mind conjures up images of curators in football kits aimlessly running around a muddy pitch. With really bad haircuts. Am I alone in this?
Anyway, the point is that the hot topics at any professional conference always seem to run in cycles. I’ve now been around long enough that issues are being recycled. All very green, I suppose, but essentially we’ve had the spin cycle, so now we’re back to the start.
Perhaps because of that I’ve become a little jaded. It could be because I’m getting older, but maybe, just maybe, the conference programmes really are a lot more tedious than they used to be. Certainly most of the fun seems to have gone out of the proceedings. It used to last a whole week, with a full day of study tours on the Friday. There used to be time to talk (it probably wasn’t called networking then), to look round the trade show and to visit museums. Now it’s all just too frenetic - too many sessions in too little time, and the ones that look interesting always clash (so do the ones that look tedious, so this could be sorted out, you know). Time to talk is limited, and it’s all become dreadfully, stiflingly earnest and worthy. I remember hearing tales when I first went to the conference of the epic gatherings of yesteryear - not that long ago, I’m not that old - which seemed epic largely in the amount of drinking that went on, or at least in the activities that were fuelled by the drinking.
Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, but to be a curator was very heaven.
Of course they may have been exaggerating (or perhaps just unable to remember clearly).
Anyway - it’s not like that now. Oh no, indeed not - it’s strictly business from first session at 9.00am to the end of the day at 6.00pm or even later. Lunch may be provided, but you have to eat it standing up. We’re serious, we’re professional, and it’s definitely, definitely, not a jolly.
Truly there is no new thing under the sun.
October 21st, 2005 at 11:32 pm
[...] Hmmm, I suspect that the Clash reference may date me rather accurately. No matter. Despite what I said here, I am going to the MA Conference in London, though I expect the Scottish contingent to be somewhat smaller than in previous years. We shall see if any of the interesting-looking sessions will live up to their promise. Certainly the last conference in Edinburgh was extremely disappointing, the keynote speakers in particular being, on the whole, very poor. Not that they necessarily lacked anything interesting to say, rather that they seemed incapable of making what they had to say either interesting or entertaining - and even at a professional conference there is a ‘showbiz’ element to public speaking. Frankly, there were not enough jokes, and too much stumbling and bumbling. [...]