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> If you're in or adjacent to academe, you'll have to travel to conferences. I really think we should be working to change this - conferences are huge wastes o
by gbrown 7y ago
> If you're in or adjacent to academe, you'll have to travel to conferences.
I really think we should be working to change this - conferences are huge wastes of resources IMHO. I usually see a handful of inspiring talks, which could just as easily have been delivered as webinars (which would also allow asynchronous viewing, involving a wider potential audience).
Then again, I'm antisocial and terrible at "networking", so those aspects of conferences don't really appeal to me.
- ghaff 7y ago>Then again, I'm antisocial and terrible at "networking", so those aspects of conferences don't really appeal to me. And, really, the "hallway track" is the value of going to conferences. For the most part, if someone just goes to a conference to sit in breakout sessions, they're probably better off just watching video of the sessions (if they were filmed) or a webinar version of the content.
- notacoward 7y agoI love going to conferences, even though I'm an introvert - some would even say a misanthrope. I just need time to recharge afterward. But the fact that some people enjoy them is far outweighed by both the environmental harm and the exclusionary aspect of requiring such travel. We need to figure out how to replicate that energy and easy discovery of like-minded people online. Even as a 30+ year online native myself, I don't quite see it yet.
- ghaff 7y agoMost people are social, even if they express it in different ways. Virtual events are fine, as are watching videos. (In fact, for bigger events, I'll often watch the keynotes from my hotel room rather than packing myself into a room with 10,000 of my closest friends so I can watch the distant speaker projected on the screen.) But it's a small subset of the experience of attending live.
- gbrown 7y agoWell put - that's exactly how I feel.
- acollins1331 7y agoIt's a huge problem that makes the hypocrisy argument palpable when thousands of climate scientists fly across the world every year for conferences on climate change. Teleconferences should be a thing for nearly everyone but the presenters, but it'll never happen because of prestige and elitism.
- tharne 7y agoThis hypocrisy is a reoccurring issue with most people who favor coercive political solutions to problems instead of voluntary and cooperative ones. When people make arguments like "taxes should be higher" or "air travel should be more expensive", they almost always mean "for other people". People need to eat their own cooking or they instantly lose all credibility, even when the facts are on their side.
- icebraining 7y agoNo, they mean "for all", rather than just for the patsies sacrificing themselves so that others can just consume more.
- unionize 7y agoTaxes aren’t coercive (unless you’re a Galt’s Gulch Randian, I suppose), and I’m sorry, but would you rather deal with driving a more efficient car or millions of immigrants trying desperately to escape drought, war, and famine after it’s too late? If climate change really is the looming disaster it seems to be (and I personally think we’re fucked), then yeah, sorry, governments might have to do some things you find unpleasant. That’s the price we pay for unfettered consumption for generations. It might be time to pay the piper. Also, it’s really hard to live in the modern world without using fossil fuel-based comforts. You can criticize air travel and still travel to a climate conference. It doesn’t make climate change any less real. You can maybe argue that people are hypocrites, but so what? The ice caps don’t give a shit. And maybe that meeting of scientists in-person is what it takes to fix a really big global problem. Flying to Asia every year for a vacation definitely won’t do that, though.
- 7y ago