Friday, July 29, 2011

A Building full of Botanists...

The 18th International Botanical Congress, Melbourne, July 24-30.

So, what happens when over 2000 of the worlds botanists converge on Melbourne for a week long plant love-in...?H
ere's a brief day by day playbook from a typical conference. More specific tales from IBC will follow:

Conference Day-1: Registration, Welcome and Mixer.
Follow the huddles of twitchy looking types to Melbourne Convention Center. Botanists can be identified by typically 'smart-casual-field" attire, looking like overgrown university students (which is what we typically are). Chinos or jeans, blue business shirt or slightly worn/botany related T-shirt under a polar-fleece, glasses, beard (generally the men) and hiking boots. Bewildered look semi optional.
Stand around in small groups generally of a similar geographic origin until someone makes a move to disperse. Wander around awkwardly looking for familiar faces while pretending to be surveying the finger-food. Avoid people whos faces you know, but names you cant for the life of you remember until you can look them up in the program, or steal a surreptitious look at their name badge. Note to organisers: this years name badges do not include institution, leading to much confusion and awkward roundabout ways of trying to remember where this person works...
Sit through opening session with tenuous cultural references. Applaud politely. Retreat to hotel at first available opportunity.

Conference Day 1.
Energetic enthusiasm abounds as the crowds mill in expectant conversation or push their way in large numbers to the coffee stands, where conversations converge and divide, threshing around the snakes of people, excited at the week on offer. Postgraduate students and postdoctoral workers dash around trying to find the famous and important people they want to make a good impression on, with the truely noteworthy assembling small rugby scrums around them. Conversations are animated and waves and hellos ring out all around.
The first sessions start and the crowds pile in to hear whatever is going. People dash between sessions, up and down stairs in the excitement to make the talks of interest. Too late for taking any precautions, the lab with 'the conference cold' is identified. Tally of people who have waved to me so far whom I swear I have never met: 4.

Conference Day 2.

The frenetic chaos of the previous day has slowed a little, and there is the opportunity to have some indepth conversation on matters of interest with the relevant people. There is still a flurry of activity between sessions, and the coffee lines may even be a little longer with people looking a little in need of a pick-me-up. Still, one pretends to by in a hurry, especially when passing someone you really dont want to get stuck talking to. The importers of the conference cold look heroically cheerful and manfully maintain that the worst is over, so it must have been non-contagious when they arrived

Conference Day 3.
Promises of collaboration have been made and data, papers and invitations have been traded, with small knots of people inhabiting the reception hall during sessions. Earnest conversations and the unlucky ones still to talk hunch over laptops. Sessions with particularly controversial or broadly appealing titles are filled out, however people move little between sessions. The skill of pretending not to notice that same person you have already said 'hello' to 4 times when scanning the room becomes important if awkward conversation is to be avoided.
Just in time for the mid-conference hump, the conference dinner provides the opportunity for everyone to let their hair down,crack out their best 1990s era suit and drink enough to become unhealthily sociable. The uneasy feeling that the conference cold was not as infectious as first thought is dawning on many people, however it is hard to differentiate between that, and a surplus of alcohol...

Conference Day 4.
Early morning halls are conspicuously empty. The queues for coffee have slowed, however the number of people nursing a hangover over a cup is certainly up. Stragglers wander in late and collapse into chairs rather than seeking out a session to break into. Social nicities are abandoned and feigning blindness on seeing 'that-person-who-you-have-nothing-left-to-say-to' gives way to a curt nod. Lectures are sparsely populated with more and more people sitting vacantly in the halls instead of picking a random talk to attend. A large portion of the population is reported to be absent due to cold-related myasma.

Conference Day 5.
Usually even the most resilient have cracked by now, if not to hangover or the conference cold, then in absence of any remaining constructive conversation. Halls feel empty, but the occasional persistent knot of people may be found around cafe tables or away from the convention center. The poor souls remaining to give presentations slave ghoulishly over talks they hope will prise some last glimmer of life from their audience. Awkward conversations can be avoided by farewells and promises to catch up, and looking forward to next time. Anecdotes on the week are traded through stuffy noses and you struggle to pretend you have retained any of the proceedings beyond a bewildering fog of graphs, slides and take home messages.

Conference +1.
Delegates return to normal life slightly shell shocked. Greetings of "how was your holiday" and "good to get back to work" land unhelpfully, and a week on the beach looks inviting.

Conference +2.
Some form of assimilation appears to have miraculously happened over night, and there is a fresh enthusiasm to attack your work and investigate/incorporate the fresh ideas and methods from the week before. You find yourself fondly looking forward to next year...

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