[lg policy] Re: Get ready for the conference preferences survey!

Thu Jul 16 12:56:39 UTC 2015

It's taken exactly a week to get exactly 100 responses! What a nice pleasing round 
number. The results are here: https://goo.gl/NchF58. What's that? You'd like me to 
write about the responses so you don't have to go to the trouble of clicking that 
link? Oh ok...

Scheduling conferences over the weekend is generally not cool, although a sizeable 
34.4% weren't familiar with the concept of a weekend and didn't care (notably, that 
number rose over the weekend...).

Over three quarters would prefer a venue with far apart well-equipped rooms to one 
with nearby less well-equipped rooms. Sociolinguists like to be well-equipped. And 
one of the free-text comments raised an important point here:

"In choosing the conference venue (and the dinner venue), allow for people with 
mobility problems. Hold the conference in the meeting rooms at the accommodation 
place or else provide transport between the accommodation and the conference venue. 
If the conference must be held elsewhere, no long distances between conference rooms, 
no steps unless there is a lift, that sort of thing."

Only 4% would like the poster session to be held out in the woods. This strikes me as 
remarkably unadventurous. Maybe I should have suggested in the sea, then the theme 
could be first, second and third wave - hahey! (A joke for all you variationists out 
there.) Ahem... 76.8% suggested the main foyer, not a separate room. Keep those 
shoulders rubbing.

Restaurants close to conference venues will be pleased with the news that 81.8% of 
respondents favoured a conference dinner at a restaurant easily walkable from the 
venue, and only 16.2% wanted dinner at the venue itself. Convenience outweighed here 
by the desire to actually see a little bit of the city you're supposedly visiting. 
Meanwhile almost nobody (2%) wanted to be coached out to a restaurant; it's nice to 
be able to make a swift exit if needed.

Turning to charitable matters, fully 100% of you said that students without funding 
should get the conference bursary. The next highest response, 80.8%, was for 
unemployed post-PhD people (if only I'd known back then!), then 67.7% for post-PhDs 
in work but without conference funding. Students with funding are not seen as 
anywhere near so needy, coming in with a minority response, 47.5%. Personally I spent 
my generous PhD conference funding attending over 30 of them during the three years; 
if I hadn't had bursaries then I might have spent more time on the thesis and less 
time trying to make Powerpoint respect my authority. So this could be good news all 
round.

Next, that flurry of little extras you receive at the reception desk of the 
conference, and the other little frills laid on throughout. Who actually wants what? 
The least popular frill is a paper pad and pen: 88.9% of people couldn't care less 
about that. A hard copy of abstract book and a free bag were similarly spurned (82.8% 
and 84.8% respectively didn't want these). Perhaps surprisingly, over half (56.6%) 
didn't even care about receiving a hard copy of the timetable. Everything else 
received a minority of rejections: lunch 34.3%, wine 43.4%, tea/coffee 7.1% (a 
conference without caffeine? GAH!), and plenary speakers 13%. I emphasise that wine 
received a minority response. There should most certainly still be wine laid on at 
the reception. Without. Doubt.

Moving on to the format of the conference dinner, a whopping 94.7% of you would 
happily attend a much cheaper and less lavish dinner so that more people could afford 
to come. I for one look forward to gorging myself at an all-you-can-eat buffet at 
future conferences. My slightly more out-there idea of a normal dinner where non-fee 
payers could come along with their own food was soundly rejected: 12.6% would go for 
that. In fact that was even less popular than foraging in the woods and dodging bears 
(14.7%). I take back what I said about sociolinguists being unadventurous.

By this point in the survey, 20.4% considered this the most exciting thing they'd 
done all day. I hope it was also the first thing they'd done that day, otherwise 
there are some seriously bored sociolinguists out there.

Now we move on to how the panel chairs exercises their dominion over presenters and 
attendees...

If a presenter is unexpectedly absent, 82.8% would prefer the chair to leave a gap so 
that the timings in the original programme still applied. This seems the opposite of 
what tends to happen in practice. A big lesson here for chairs.

If a presenter ignores that waving 'STOP' sign and keeps going past their allotted 
time, 11.1% would crack that whip and cut them off immediately. The biggest response 
(43.4%) was for cutting them off half way through their Q&A. 32.3% would let them 
squander their Q&A period and allow no questions (well it is their fault), while 13% 
would allow one short question for Q&A squanderers. No respondents AT ALL thought the 
chair should let the presenter stray into the next presenter's time slot. Take note 
please, chairs!

Next, a conference phenomenon so widely mocked it's been made into a cartoon: 
http://goo.gl/5KCp4F. It's that 'question' which feels like it might never end, and 
might not really be a question at all. 19.8% of you would patiently allow this to go 
on (and on...) in the hope that something interesting might come up, but most people 
in that audience (62.8%) would be glaring at the chair willing them to cut in and 
invite the presenter to respond to anything so far that actually resembled a 
question. Meanwhile 16.7% would be eyeing up the nearest window and wishing the chair 
would eject this questioner out of it. (At times during this week, as the survey 
responses came in, there were decisively more window-ejecters than patient waiters.)

Now we consider that kind of question which might be nice and short, but doesn't make 
the remotest scrap of sense. It might as well have been delivered using interpretive 
dance. The four survey options were for the chair to: rephrase this somehow; ask the 
questioner to try again; leave the presenter to answer on their own; or bail on this 
question altogether and suggest they discuss it in the coffee break. The responses 
were actually split pretty evenly, with a small but probably not significant lead 
(30.9%) for bailing and moving on. The lowest response (22.3%) was for the chair to 
do nothing, so that at least gives chairs a 77.7% mandate for doing something, 
anything, to help a befuddled presenter in the face of absurdity.

By this point in the survey, 17.6% considered the survey to be the thrilling pinnacle 
of their week. I hope these people filled out the survey first thing on Monday. 
Otherwise I think some people need to be introduced to office tennis: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kznInnMzQss.

Moving on to the wild badlands of the world wide internets... 66.7% of respondents 
felt that presenting by Skype should be allowed for a limited number of people, 
according to need (e.g. those with caring/parenting responsibilities). A much smaller 
but still notable 28.3% responded that this shouldn't be allowed at all, whilst only 
5.1% were happy with remote presenting as a routine option. For info, here are a 
couple of links explaining how that can work: https://goo.gl/zhMuN, 
https://goo.gl/r3zBil. You can then switch to video chat for Q&A. But if this catches 
on, I would humbly suggest that Skype presenters make sure the webcam is perched 
above their face, not below. Looking up someone's nose might be a literal view of 
their mind, but it's not useful otherwise.

On the question of putting plenaries and presentations online (live-streaming and/or 
hosted online afterwards) there were eight options so I won't discuss them all. 
Perhaps of most interest, no option here enjoyed majority approval: the highest 
(46.4%) was for hosting the plenaries afterwards, followed closely (45.4%) by 
live-streaming the plenaries and hosting them afterwards. The other options received 
much lower responses, and only 22.7% would be interested in seeing the foraging 
survival challenge online. No sociolinguistic bear-dodging on Youtube any time soon then.

As for a completely online conference, this was shot right out of the water. In fact 
it was almost shot out of a cannon into the sun. A paltry 10.5% would go for that 
sort of shenanigan (e-nanigan?), with 86.3% favouring travel paperwork, airline 
bustle, getting lost in corridors, awkward shoulder-rubbing, nonsense questions, 
sweaty drudging between poorly air-conditioned rooms, and rushed breaks for 
coffee-flavoured water. Academia can be a lonely existence, and it seems we'll put up 
with a lot just to share the same air once in a while. Personally I quite like all 
the sweat and drudge, I can't deny it. I love you guys.

Lastly, only 2.1% of respondents said that the wonderful, free, robust and 
authoritative Sociolinguistic Events Calendar (http://www.baal.org.uk/slxevents.html) 
is about as useful as an inflatable dartboard. All the other responses I interpret as 
various shades of gushing approval for this excellent, free, accessible, 
cross-compatible, free resource. A big round of applause to all the calendar 
moderators for their tireless efforts.

The free text comments at the end of the survey came up with some gems. I strongly 
recommend having a read of them yourself. One person said I am great, another wants 
to hug me, and another nominated me for president. The rest of the comments are 
interesting but not as important as these three. Judge for yourselves: 
https://goo.gl/NchF58.

Enjoy conference season everyone; hopefully see you on the circuit.

Dave

--
Dr. Dave Sayers
Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University
Honorary Research Fellow, Arts & Humanities, Swansea University (2009-2015)
dave.sayers at cantab.net | http://shu.academia.edu/DaveSayers

On 09/07/2015 10:56, Dave Sayers wrote:
> It's the experience you've been waiting for, whether you knew it or not! As
> conference season is hotting up, the good people at the Sociolinguistic Events
> Calendar (http://www.baal.org.uk/slxevents.html) have put together a survey to reveal
> what's hot and what's not in the world of sociolinguistic conferences.
>
> There are two prizes available when completing this survey. Once you see the overall
> results, you will be the guaranteed recipient of EITHER a robust and warming sense of
> collegiality at the opinions of like-minded colleagues, OR a dizzying sense of
> alienation at the bizarre views of the weirdos in your field. Take the survey now to
> find out which prize is yours!
>
> http://goo.gl/forms/cN2jAcCciQ
>
> And remember to head along to http://www.baal.org.uk/slxevents.html and subscribe to
> the Sociolinguistic Events Calendar, to enjoy the constant bewildering bombardment of
> all the simultaneous sociolinguistic conferences and other events around the world
> that you can't possibly attend!
>
> Love and hugs from everyone at the Sociolinguistic Events Calendar :)
>
> P.S. In case this message hasn't been spammed around quite widely enough, please feel
> free to send it on to any other sociolinguistically minded folks!
>
>
> --
> Dr. Dave Sayers
> Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University
> Honorary Research Fellow, Arts & Humanities, Swansea University (2009-2015)
> dave.sayers at cantab.net | http://shu.academia.edu/DaveSayers
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