Conference Review

I'm not sure what to say about the 2010 Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness conference just ended. As the onsite coordinator I worked a lot more than I listened, which meant I missed many of the papers or heard them from "just outside the door." In addition, much of my interaction with presenters was from a practical point of view, dealing with last minute presentation requests, reasonable and otherwise. As with any group, there is always a prima donna or three and I tend to find them tedious. Within this group those demanding individuals also stand in stark contrast to the equanimity of the community as a whole, which makes them even more annoying to me.

My role as site coordinator also meant that I missed spending quality time with some olde friends and colleagues, which is generally seen my most as the high point of the conference. And a bit of a cold & fever also meant I was harboring my energy by sleeping rather than engaging in late night conversations.

I guess I haven't fully processed my own feelings to this year's conference. I do know that next year Jeff will be running the event in Portland and I am already planning to head up to Oregon, but as an conference participant only. No side duties, maybe not even a paper to present. I do know that I missed the play time this year. I won't do that again.

Oh, in response to several emails. Yes, those were the real titles of the conference presentations I posted over the past four days.. And yes, it is true that academics love to use colons in the titles for their projects, but really those were the papers. You can't judge quality nor content by the length of the labels and big words do not intelligence make.

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photo credit: friendsofirony.org