Conferences II

As touched on in the last entry, this week I'm in Birmingham for the "Smart Moving conference 2005". Essentially, it's about all different ways that technology improves travelling. This covers everything from parking technology, increasing road capacity, giving information to the traveller and a whole lot more.

Yesterday I stood up and presented my paper entitled "Strategic Management of Urban Road Networks" - basically talking about examples of good practice for local authorities looking to minimise delays from highway incidents.

From my experience, conferences seem to be divided into two main categories.

i) Academic conferences: Mostly populated by dusty academics who stand up and bluster for 20 minutes, perhaps trying to hide the fact that what they seem to do has little relevance to the real world and is destined to be hidden away on a shelf somewhere. Some of the talks are genuinely interesting and you meet a few people whose work is connected in some way with what you do. On the second night, the conference social event takes place. This usually means most of the delegates finish up crawling back to their hotel at some ungodly hour and turn up the next day late and still steaming from the night before.

ii) Commercial Conferences: Mostly populated by people trying to sell you (or other delegates) something who stand up and bluster for 20 minutes about how great their company and products are. You sit their feeling slightly embarrassed that you have no budget to spend with them. You resent the fact that their interest in what you do appears to be motivated by how they can use this as an angle to make money out of somebody. Some of the talks are genuinely interesting and you meet a few people whose work is connected in some way with what you do. On the second night, the conference social event takes place. This usually means most of the delegates finish up crawling back to their hotel at some ungodly hour and turn up the next day late and still steaming from the night before. The advantage being that since there are profit rich companies involved you can usually find someone to pay for your food (and maybe drink) for the evening. These conferences are also far more likely to end the night in a strip club.

This week’s conference falls into category two. That said, I have seen two other papers similar to mine that were not attempting to peddle any goods or services.

For me, an ideal conference would be one that had a healthy balance between genuine research "for the good of mankind" and how it can be applied to real world problems.

On the plus side, they do provide a good lunch here at the NEC.

In my next entry, I'll discuss the advantages and pitfalls of writing a paper "with co-authorship" and how this usually takes longer than you might think.