All 11 entries tagged Conference

Attending the Third International Conference on Sustainability Culture

An early start for a truly international event on sustainability culture is well worth the effort

This morning I had a super early start…at 4am…in order to be up, ready and chirpy enough to attend the 3^rd International Conference on Sustainability Culture#mce_temp_url#. This event, hosted by Dr Theodoor Richard and the National Chung Hsing University in Taiwan was, naturally, running on their local time for an afternoon’s event. While I’ll confess it was a bit of a challenge to rouse myself to alert status in the dead of night [1], I was really glad I did – not least because the event ties into a future special issue of Exchanges.

Mostly I was delighted to be there because the speakers and topics of discussion were fascinating ones. Perhaps I was a little spoiled because the topic of sustainability and environmentalism have long been close to my heart, but it was superb to hear such a variety of topics and insights too. The speakers were drawn from around the world, although I believe I was the furthest west of all the delegates for once. A refreshing change! Thankfully, most of the speakers are going to be (hopefully) appearing in the special issue, so it’ll be a pleasure you’ll all be able to enjoy once that comes out next year.

The event opened with a welcome from Professor Jen Ming-Song, a university dean of our hosts for today. This was followed by a keynote talk from Emeritus Professor Geoffrey Scott (WSU, Australia) who spoke with such a casual but engaging style that I found myself quite envious of his aplomb. Geoffrey shared many thoughts about enabling sustainable cultures within higher education institutions, and how to affect change from both a top down and bottom-up approach. As someone with a long and storied career his candid insights were useful – especially when it came to dealing with and influencing your university vice-chancellor (or similar) and their often-entrenched perspectives![2]

This rousing intro was followed by four shorter papers from Duncan Furquhar, Maria Giovanna Cassa, Graham Wood and Lucy Sabin. The topics were varied, from soil carbon capture to ethnographic studies of permaculture in Sardinia, through philosophical considerations of ‘sustainability culture’ and finally a fascinating look at the fusion of art and science in an over-agrochemicaled world. There was something to consider or be enlightened by in each of these talks, and I think what I liked the most was how genuinely interdisciplinary this made the event. Indeed, it reinforced for me that the topic of sustainability culture is an excellent match for Exchanges’ publication mission too.[3]

After a short break we went into an hour-long discussion, drawing in the other eager participants as we explored contrast viewpoints – not least of which being the tensions between expansion versus contraction as a key aspect of sustainability. Alongside this there was naturally, no pun intended, the extant tensions between industrialisation, expansional and economic factors vs traditional, local, and desirable lifestyles. There was much debate around agency and power relations, a long-time keen interest of mine, and while there was some common ground among the delegates, there’s also a fair bit of disagreement on where (and with whom) the power for change lies: be it the economic overlords, political actors or strongly networked communities.

For me, I certainly think one of the key takeaways from the discussions was that while much of is what is traditional (be it in agriculture, society or life in general) IS sustainable. Yet, the tensions arise, and the environment is impacted, because these aspects are not scalable or even maintainable at current levels. Food production and related security issues being just one such exemplar of this concern.

As I say, this was an excellent event and with lots to chew over for everyone in attendance – me certainly among them. I shall be reflecting on the lessons for some time, and no doubt once the special issue comes to publication, there will be more to be said by scholars better informed on the topics than I!

My thanks to Theodoor and colleagues for organising the event, and of course everyone who contributed to it!

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Endnotes

[1] I was up with my alarm, but how I made breakfast and tea beforehand, was pretty much on autopilot.

[2] Strong resonances here with our Research Culture issue(s) too.

[3] For more of my thoughts on the event – see the @ExchangesJournal Bluesky profile, or indeed follow the #tag #SustainabilityCulture.

Gareth Johnson : 26 Nov 2024 10:41 |  Tags: Conference Culture Event Icsc Issue Special Sustainability Taiwan |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Attending the International Research Culture Conference 2024

Writing about web page https://warwick.ac.uk/research/ncrc/ircc/

Second research culture conference is a time to celebrate and look to the future.

Yesterday I went along as Exchanges Chief Editor to attend the second International Research Culture Conference(IRCC '24), hosted at Warwick once more. As readers will remember at the 2023 event we launched our collaboration with the National Centre for Research Culture and the work began towards producing our first research culture special issue. That came out last month, and if you haven’t read it yet – you really should.

Yesterday was a chance, alongside listening to a range of informative and engaging speakers, to celebrate this publication a little. More importantly thought it was a chance to announce the call for the next research culture special issue – arising from this year’s conference. That, and of course my call for more associate editors to get involved. Delegates to the event will soon have a mailshot with more information about that.

It was a long day, but another one where I spent most of the moments between sessions talking to various delegates about the journal, our plans and how they can get involved. My thanks to everyone who stopped by our stall for a little chat – and I hope you enjoyed our little bits of promotional merchandise too. And my thanks to the NCRC for working with us once again in launching this second exciting issue call.

Next up though, my focus will be swinging firmly back onto the MRC @ 50 special issue – coming very, very soon to your screens.

Gareth Johnson : 17 Sep 2024 09:23 |  Tags: 2024 Conference Culture Ircc Issue Launch Ncrc Research Special |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New Episode: In Conversation with Simona Di Martino

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/podcast

After a break the first in a new series of Exchanges podcast episodes goes live.

It’s been a while since our last episode – mainly because I’ve been focussed in supporting our numerous special issues and editors over this time, and also because we’ve been awaiting a new issue of the journal. Now that’s out, I’ve been chatting informally with a few of the authors about coming onto the podcast to talk about their lives, research and publications – so hopefully a few more episodes are on their way.

Before that though, I was delighted to be approached by one of the IAS’ associate fellows to talk about a conference she was recently involved in hosting. While for once this isn’t directly related to any publications or issues of Exchanges, I think you’ll find there’s a strong resonance with a number of the projects we’ve got underway for future special issues.

Listen in here (or on most major podcast platforms):

Voices of Transnational Girlhood(s) on Identity, Gender, and Culture: In Conversation with Simona Di Martino [22:23]

This episode we talk with Associate Fellow ⁠Simona Di Martino⁠ (⁠@SimoDiMa1⁠) about the ⁠recent conference event⁠ she organised at Warwick which tackled questions of girlhood, transnationalism, identify, gender and culture. We talk about the challenges and delights of hosting such an event, and Simona reflects on the emergent themes and key messages discussed by the participants. Girlhood is, Simona argues, a neglected area of study, making an event such as this not just a crucial forum for current scholars, but a way to energise and enthuse the next generation of researchers in the topic.

Podcasts of the conference talks will be coming soon on the conference site.

Gareth Johnson : 08 May 2024 09:25 |  Tags: Conference Episode Girlhood New Podcast |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

MRC at 50 – Conference & Special Issue Contribution Launch

Writing about web page https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/

MRC anniversary celebrations set the scene for an exciting future journal volume.

Yesterday I attended the 50^th anniversary symposium in honour of the Modern Records Centre (MRC) at Warwick. If you’re not been previously aware of the MRC and its work, the website and indeed the Centre itself is most certainly well worth a visit: if only to marvel at the variety and breadth of their collections. This diversity was a key element reflected across the spread of topics discussed at yesterday’s event. Speaker’s talked about their research which had all been generated – in part or in its entirety through usage of the MRC’s collections. From sex workers to trade unions through the French Resistance, disability and cycling: it was an undoubted smorgasbord of themes.

I recall, many years ago and in a previous post at Warwick, I had the opportunity to be walked through the MRC’s archive itself by the then Archivist. It was a rare opportunity to get ‘up close and personal’ with the ephemera, communications and collected papers of many significant figures in political, social and national history alike. Certainly, being that close to historical documents was a thrilling moment.

Since its founding though, the MRC has clearly had an impact far beyond Warwick itself. This was undoubtably reflected through the international scope of the discussions and presenters represented yesterday. I shan’t try and capture the essence of the day: there was so much to take in. Plus, I suspect offering this kind of perspective is an element which the special issue call we informally launched yesterday will do to a greater degree.

An archive of thinking and research to honour the archive itself!

Hence, we will be approaching all of the presenters, and a few other selected people too, over the coming weeks to invite them all to contribute a paper to this forthcoming special commemorative issue of Exchanges. I can assure readers that if its contents are anything like as engaging as yesterday’s talks, then you are in for a real treat! We hope to bring you the issue sometime in early to mid-2024, so watch out on our social media for more news as we get closer to the launch date.

My thanks to Pierre Botcherby and the whole MRC team for inviting Exchanges to form a modest but valuable marker of the MRC’s first 50 years of success!

A copy of the call for papers is now available.

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For more information on the MRC’s work or collections, visit warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/ or contact archives@warwick.ac.uk. For more about the forthcoming special issue, contact Exchanges at exchangesjournal@warwick.ac.uk.

Gareth Johnson : 21 Sep 2023 10:41 |  Tags: Archives Collaboration Conference History Issue Launch Mrc Special |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Communities & Communication Conference – April 2021

Writing about web page https://553f53b1-7a4c-4403-8bce-421ef7bc549f.filesusr.com/ugd/fe0c46_47e045df34e94dbab2ca5df70dfbfe6c.pdf

Last week, well Saturday [1] to be precise, I was a speaker at Staffordshire Universities Communities and Communication: Interdisciplinary international Conference and Festival. I was there to present a paper with the elegant title [2] of The Transformative Evolution of an Early Career Researcher Editorial Community. In essence, I aimed to briefly explore the configuration of our long-running institutionally based open-access, interdisciplinary journal published by the Institute of Advanced Study at the University of Warwick.

If you weren’t at the conference, you missed what was a very engaging and varied day. Alongside a series of insightful keynotes, there were two streams of breakout sessions looking at different aspects of ‘communities’ from local, to performative, through institutional and those in a learning configuration. It was in this latter category that my paper featured. Personally, a real highlight of the day was the keynote from Nicola Twemlow Who Knows Best: The Value in Communities. While Nicola had a lot of inspiring things to share from her own experience and activities, she also introduced me to the rather useful participation tool Vevox. Seeing a living, evolving world cloud appear organically from the delegates during Nicola’s talk, gave me some ideas on how to pep up some future training engagements of my own.

In terms of my own contribution, the paper began by exploring the genesis of the Exchanges journal, and the history of our editorial community. From its beginnings as a small collective offshoot from our local Early Career Fellows (ECF) programme in 2013, through to its international, expanded representational membership today. Interestingly, for the first time anywhere, I put together a potted history of how the journal had changed over time, which required a little bit of background digging in our archives, combined with a few conversations with longer standing Editorial Board members.

My discussions continued through an exploration of the special issues which have served to bolster and reconfigure our activities since the beginning of 2019. In particular, I illustrated how our title’s developmental and discourse twin missions resonated with this new direction for the title, alongside seeing a resultant revalorisation of our work in the eyes of our publishing institution. The paper offered a few suggestions about the tangible benefits perceived through our associate editors’ programme, stemming from a series of semi-structured interviews held with the post holders, considering what relevance their insights offered in terms of future projects, editorial training and scheme recruitment.

Moreover, the paper concluded with a brief examination of the unique operational, ideological and communicative challenges faced by the journal. Part of me feels this section in particular could be problematised in another paper at a future event, although likely to a different audience. Finally, the talk wrapped up with a few brief thoughts on the lessons learned by the journal, alongside its emerging new priorities and future plans.

While not the most ground-breaking of talks, it was deeply fulfilling to have the paper warmly received by the hosts and delegates to the conference. Hopefully, there will be a recording of the paper made live in the near future, but for the paper’s title link above will take you to the slides.

Overall, then, despite the (common) technically challenges faced by running online events, with participants around the globe using variable machine configurations, the hosts handled everything with good humour and great aplomb. If anything, they managed to convey a sense of calm, cool, and connected operations managing things behind the scenes – although from my own experience I expect this means they were all running themselves ragged to give such a polished performance. Certainly, in marked contrast with my somewhat frustrating experiences at the IATL conference the previous week, I had a seamless presentation experience, despite falling over my own words a few times. And as a delegate, access to papers and sessions was near faultless!

I think my one regret was not having any time to take part in the ‘random networking’ opportunities, and while ‘chat roulette’ might not have been everyone’s cup of tea, it was a great innovation to try and engender a feeling of ‘presence’ at a virtual event. My thanks therefore, to all the organisers and speakers alike for a day it was worth taking out of my weekend!

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[1] I remain baffled while culture and communications conference always seem to be hosted at the weekend! It doesn’t seem to be ‘a thing’ in the STEM disciplines.

[2] IMHO at least. It tied the paper into the conference theme quite neatly.

Gareth Johnson : 27 Apr 2021 11:24 |  Tags: Conference Editorial Experience Paper Staffordshire |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Experiential Learning Impacts for Post–Graduates within Scholar–Led Editorial Practice

Writing about web page https://youtu.be/-dm52GoW5FY

Today I attended the Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching Conference: 'Interdisciplinarity: Learning from Each Other', hosted online by IATL. I was supposed to be delivering a paper entitled Experiential Learning Impacts for Post-Graduates within Scholar-Led Editorial Practice, but sadly technical challenges were to frustrate my live performance. A real shame, as the twin pleasures of delivering a conference paper are in the transmission of information to the audience, but crucially, the comments and questions which follow. As an author I was talking to recently commented ‘It’s about testing the water, refining your ideas and exploring possibilities with your peers’, which is truly an invaluable experience.

Not to be entirely frustrated, having slaved over the content during the Easter break, I recorded the narrated slides. So you can enjoy fifteen minutes of me talking about Exchanges, our associate editors and some of the challenges we face as a journal. The link to YouTube can be found below:

• https://youtu.be/-dm52GoW5FY

As always, comments and thoughts warmly invited.

Gareth Johnson : 15 Apr 2021 16:33 |  Tags: Conference Interdisciplinarity Paper Recording Video |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

15th Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing & Exchanges

Writing about web page https://site.uit.no/muninconf/program/

This week I’ve had the pleasure of virtually attending the Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing, host at UiT University of the Artic, in beautiful Tromsø. While due to Covid-19 I sadly was unable to travel there, it was still two highly enjoyable and informative days focussing on a topic that rather fills my professional life. As all conference sessions were recorded you’ll be able to follow the link above and watch them to your heart’s content.

However, most excitingly I was one of the speakers at this year’s conference, on the topic The Twin Dilemma: Successfully Operating a Scholar-Led Journal to Enable Discourse and Empower Researcher Development. The habitual Doctor Who reference in the title aside, my talk focussed on the experiences we’ve had on Exchanges in terms of our work towards special issues, and the experiences of my associate editors as per the abstract:

The presentation will explore the configuration of a long-running and successful scholar-led, diamond open-access, interdisciplinary journal Exchanges, published by the University of Warwick, which combines knowledge dissemination with contributor developmental goals. Drawing on experiential data, the presentation provides ethnographic insights into the mutually beneficial outcomes derived from recruiting post-graduate researcher ‘associate editors’ to work on the title. It also problematises the balance between potentially exploitative, collaborative editorial production within the context of necessary academic immaterial labour required to operate an interdisciplinary scholar-led title.

I’ve had some very positive feedback and one or two post-talk conversations already which might be opening some new avenues for the journal to tentatively explore. Moreover, with an audience of 150 globally for the talk, I’m hopeful it might also engender a few new submissions of work to the journal too, which would of course be absolutely fantastic.

Fingers crossed circumstances and journal developments allow me to be physically in attendance for next year’s conference!

Gareth Johnson : 19 Nov 2020 13:58 |  Tags: Communication Conference Munin Norway Scholarly Tromso |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Reflections of the Vitae Researcher Development Conference

On Monday (16^th Sept) this week, I had the delightful opportunity of attending and speaking at the Vitae Researcher Development International Conference, hosted at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel. Leaving home before dawn, and returning home quite late in the evening, it was nevertheless an excellent event. Exchanges has a core mission to support not only the dissemination of early career researcher’s discourse and, in line with the IAS’s mission, also seeks to work with authors in developing their prose and voice. Hence, attending a conference focussing solely on the practice, theory and policy of developing researchers was very much in my interest.

While the conference was broken down into plenaries, breakout sessions and workshops like any conference, it was interesting to witness the recurrent themes that came up, especially during the opening keynotes. Wellbeing was a strongly represented theme, along with that of coping with a changing research environment, both for researchers and those who work alongside them. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, the ‘B-word’ was alluded to on numerous occasions as a particular challenge for the entire HE sector, not to mention the nation as a whole. However, it wasn’t a topic that any of the sessions I attended specifically focussed on, but nevertheless remains the elephant in the room we can’t simply ignore.

These dark clouds aside, after the fairly rousing opening session, we moved on to an excellent lunch before for me the high-spot of the day: my own talk. Those of you who have met me, know there’s on thing I love doing (almost) as much as managing Exchanges, and that’s to talk about various aspects of scholarly communication and publishing to anyone who will listen. At length.

I was speaking as part of a panel session providing case studies of researcher development practice. It was, as a few of the speakers commented, a slightly odd session in that the examples of researcher development ranged from an exemplar collaborative workshop to discussions around a specially configured building housing 6 overlapping departments in Barcelona. Nevertheless, the packed room seemed responsive to the topics discussed. My own contribution was very well received too, as I was bombarded with questions during and after the session. There was quite a positive response on social media too, and I suspect there may be some follow up with a few people as a result. My thanks to the conference organisers for hosting me, and I hope to be back with another paper next year!

After this session there were a couple of ‘half-plenaries’, so called as half the delegates would fit into each of the allocated rooms. I attended the one with the more senior academics speaking, and after some (slightly baffling) discussion on the ‘concordat’ [1], two particularly inspiring talks from Prof Matthew Flinders (Sheffield) and Prof Marcos Munafò (Bristol) followed. Matthew’s enthusiasm in particular was infectious, especially given he launched into his talk before halting after a couple of minutes to realise he’d failed to introduce himself to the audience!

Matthew expounded on the theme of change, but also uncertainty, in that ‘change is endemic’ within researcher careers, but what and how it is changing is not easy to identify or quantify. He also noted how much developmental effort centres on early-career researchers, but given the post-doc period of employment now increasingly stretching to a decade or more, the mental health toll on many emerging scholars is immense. And this is even before they land their first ‘academic’ post. He noted how mid-career researchers and professoriate also need developmental support and mentoring (‘the M word’) in order to cope with both the changes across the academy and within the ‘academic job’ remit. This he stressed was alongside the need for them to be able to offer effective support to their subordinates. He took the opportunity too to criticise the ‘silly culture’ wherein scholars leaving the academy are perceived to have ‘failed’ by their colleagues remaining behind. He argued these people could return to universities and bring an incredible richness of experience with them, and yet systematically they were disenfranchised by the career esteem models the academy has embraced, to the detriment of teaching and research. Matthew concluded by noting how the academy doesn’t sufficiently celebrate, support and manage the exceptional talent they have within research support staff and units; which given the increasingly crucial part they play within the modern research team was disheartening.

Marcos, started on a theme familiar to myself, that scholars are more incentivised (through career esteem structures and metrics) to publish and bring in funding, rather than to produce research which answered genuine problems. He noted, as has been discussed elsewhere, the lack of publication of ‘null results’, due to the low esteem it brings to journals and authors, results in pointless and resource-costly repetition of experimental research which could be avoided. He also drew the insightful simile concerning academia, notably doctoral programmes, and the US 1970s motor industry; where the focus on mass production ignored the many errors requiring remediation. Marcos also highlighted the lack of accountability within the academy, illustrated by failing PhD students. Here, there was little blowback on supervisors when this happened, which was not an equitable state of affairs. Marcos also highlighted how senior academics continue to be recruited for the possessing wrong traits for their roles. People are being picked for being career superstars with strong esteem credentials, rather than being able to demonstrate strong human resource, managerial and project management abilities. This he suggested added to the problems faced by the academy as an employer and in terms of employee wellbeing.

After this excellent session, I attended a workshop on failure and PGRs – Fail Live, delivered by Davina Whitnall and Dr Ursula Hurley at the University of Salford. While fairly discursive, and inaugurated with a guided mediation, I confess of this conference session was the one which inspired me the least. That isn’t to say the topic of embracing and celebrating failure as ‘part of the story of success’ wasn’t an important one to be addressed. However, the workshop felt unwieldly in terms of content and delivery, and I suspect it would have worked better with a smaller and more intimate audience, than to a room of 40+ delegates.

To end on a high, I concluded my day in one of the special interest sessions, in this case concerning academic podcasting. Hosted by Donald Lush (King’s College London) the session made use of the time to do a ‘live’ recording of a joint episode of two podcasts: one aimed at established researchers and the other at doctoral candidates. I’ve long been a producer and contributor to podcasts in a personal capacity, and I confess they’re on my wishlist to develop around Exchanges and our contributor community as an extension to the journal’s brand and discourse contribution. In this respect, myself and the library’s Scholarly Communications team have been having some tentative conversations about this and other media areas, so perhaps watch this space for news of our future collaborations.

As you can tell from these reflections, I was pleasantly surprised to find such an embarrassment of inspiration, insight and engagement at the Vitae conference. It exceeded my expectations in nearly every sense, and I wished I could have somehow transcended time and space to attend many more of the breakout sessions than I was physically able. I also slightly regret only booking for one of the two days, as the second day also clearly included a lot of engaging material. I look forward to catching up with my Warwick library colleague who was in attendance throughout.

Nevertheless, I was delighted by the reception of the work that Exchanges and my editors do, which is something I’ve passed along to them, in partial thanks for all their efforts in helping keep the journal running.

I'll share some notes from my talk, in my next post.

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[1] That would be The Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, but it wasn’t something I was keenly aware of until after the conference.

Gareth Johnson : 19 Sep 2019 15:26 |  Tags: Conference Development Exchanges Presentations Reflections Speaking |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Scholar–Led Utopian Publishing: The Utopia, Dystopia & Climate Change Conference

Last week I flew out to a scorchingly hot Italy to the Utopia, Dystopia and Climate Change conference, being held at Monash University’s Prato Centre. I was in attendance as an invited speaker wearing my editorial hat, making this the second successive conference I’ve attended both in Italy and around climate change as a theme. You might suggest there’s something in the air, but I couldn’t possibly comment.

This time, rather than the STEM focus of ESA Living Planet 2019, I was at a primarily arts and humanities event, hosted by the Utopian Studies Society, Europe. Thankfully, this was a slightly smaller conclave than the previous Brobdingnagian scale Milan event, although there were certainly dozens of eager utopian scholars attending. As I previously commented, there’s real eye-opening value in attending events which lie outside one’s own discipline, and this one certainly was fascinating. Due to time constraints, and perhaps a subconscious desire to escape the heat [1], I was only present for the conference’s opening day, but I found it a very valuable experience all the same.

Once again, I received a very warm welcome from the other delegates and enjoyed a range of stimulating conversations about their research, along with insights into their career journeys. In a couple of cases I had some very in-depth discussions concerning the job market beyond academia contrasted with the ‘publish or perish’ marketised HE environment. A topic, for another post, or if you buy me a drink sometime at a conference, a lengthy diatribe.

Primarily I was attending at the invite of the organisers to deliver a session targeted at doctoral candidates and early career researchers on ‘journal publication’. A very broad remit undoubtedly, and one which I fear I could speak for far longer than my allocated 30 minutes. So I took as the central theme for my paper the experiences of publishing a scholar-led journal led by and for early career researchers. Monash’s Prato Centre is a delightful building from both the interior and exterior, and a very grand environment to talk to fellow scholars. That said, to my slight trepidation I discovered I was delivering my session on a panel with the Society’s chair as the other speaker, so a modicum of extra pressure there.

My talk, the slides from which I’ve linked to below, was very well received by the standing room only audience. I’m happy to take their rapt attention and response to my talk as a signifier of the delegates’ general strong publication participation interests, rather than a desire to hear myself particularly. However, I’m delighted to report I’ve had a number of subsequent conversations both at and after the conference about publishing with Exchanges, so I deeply believe the trip was a valuable one for the journal.

Of course, I was also there to reveal the early details of our forthcoming themed special cli-fi issue call for publications [2], largely targeting delegates at the conference, but also potentially embracing other scholars with a strong interest in the field. Given the range of papers and discourse at the conference, I’m reassured this will be a fascinating issue.

No more conferences for a couple of months now, so I can focus on developing the journal, and doing a little bit of publishing of my own, over the summer. But regular readers can rest assured, I’ll be keeping you updated on the developments within Exchanges over the coming weeks and months.

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[1] Although I’d planned my visit duration months ago

[2] Probably coming out sometime in August 2019, keep an eye out for it

Gareth Johnson : 11 Jul 2019 11:27 |  Tags: Clifi Conference Italy Monash Prato Publishing Utopia |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

One Step Beyond: The ESA Living Planet Symposium 2019

Writing about web page https://lps19.esa.int/NikalWebsitePortal/living-planet-symposium-2019/lps19

Last week I had a rare opportunity to step professionally well and truly outside my comfort zone. I had taken up the rather unexpected but delightful chance to be a delegate at a major international conference in a totally unrelated academic field to my own. If you’ve not picked up from earlier posts, my own research domain is media and communications, within a healthy cultural studies envelope, specialising in academic communication. To spend a few days dipping in and out of the European Space Agency’s Living Planet Symposium, which brought together over 4,000 scientists, industrialists, technologists and industry people in the earth observation sciences was, to say the least somewhat daunting. Thankfully I wasn’t there to present myself!

Technically speaking, I was on vacation, accompanying my wife to Milan, Italy where she and colleagues were contributing to a session concerning their team’s research. However, the chance arose for me to break off from planned my marathon walking city excursions [1] and attend the conference too. I concluded it would be well worth sacrificing some of my leisure time to increase my experience of interacting with and listening to scholars outside of my normal realm. As the editor of an interdisciplinary title, clearly this was a great professional development prospect!

What struck me, other than the sheer size of the venue and delegate numbers [2], were the similarities between this and many other conferences in my own fields I’ve attended. From the friendly registration desks and bag of conference swag, through to opening plenary and associated breakout sessions, despite the topic divergence, the symposium still strongly resonated with most professional events I’ve attended. Given the international nature of the conference, I was a little surprised by the opening panel being dominated by white, older men, albeit one fronted by a young, glamourous woman hired to moderate. While she inarguably gave a polished and professional performance, her role’s juxtaposition with the other stage denizens didn’t make for great optics. Going by the twitter feed, this hadn’t escaped the audience’s attention either, and it was heartening to see the BBC’s Jonathan Amos taking the organisers to task for the lack of demonstrable diversity. The less said about a similarly composed panel commenting at one point on Africa’s past and future contribution to earth observation science, perhaps the better.

These slightly uncomfortable elements aside, I spent most of my time at the conference dipping into sessions and observing the speakers. With all kinds of academic communication being a personal interest, meant the opportunity to listen to and watch speakers, divorced from a need to comprehend their content, provided a golden opportunity to conduct a little presentational critique.

For me, I think the chief recurrent issue was that time-honoured foible of trying to cram too much information onto a single slide. The NASA representative for example, but by no means the only one, crammed no fewer than 22 lines on a single slide, displayed for less than 30 seconds. I could almost feel my teeth grinding in frustration trying to parse the information in that talk. I was also amused that, plenary speakers aside, every single speaker I sat through insisted in using a PowerPoint [2] style presentation. I was rather hoping to see a little more ‘hands-free’ presentation, but I guess academics and industrialists alike fall back on the PowerPoint crutch rather more than we perhaps should. Although, I can be as guilty as the next scholar in overusing, so I’m not critiquing from a higher plateau. It was just a shame there wasn’t more variety in the ‘chalk & talk’ approaches adopted to communicate to the audiences.

There was also a genuinely evidenced split between speakers with media training heritage or experience, and the majority who hadn’t. Most of the plenary speakers had clearly been coached in their presentational style, with for example the head of ESA providing a real standout in terms of clarity and engagement. Very much a style to be emulated I felt. Although, it I am going to be critical, I’d perhaps leave out the string quartet and bombastic Day Today style promotional video the audience were subjected to at various points. At worst it felt like corporate brainwashing, and at best (given the climate crisis theme of the symposium) I began to wonder if I’d stumbled into the final reel of Soylent Green.

While I accept some speakers may have been harder to focus on given my limited personal field experience and lack of shared vocabulary, there were some who really drew my interest. I know more about Finland’s space programme as a result than I ever expected, and was delighted to hear about it. Notably, quite a few senior organisational representatives fell into the trap of assuming the audience will gift them with their attention, simply because of their personal reputation and standing. Sorry to say, attention needs to be grasped, won and captured, it’s rarely genuinely given.

Other weaknesses I spotted were the inability to thread a talk with presentational narrative; the normative preference seemingly being a rhythmic delivery of: facts, facts, graphic, facts then conclusion. Perhaps this observation comes from being a qualitative scholar at an event riven with scientism, positivism and quantitative method. Nevertheless, even in these field facts can still be used to tell a powerful and engaging story, without diminishing the science which underlies them, in a manner which serves to enhance comprehension and retention. I really believe many of the papers I witnessed would have been deeply enhanced through embracing storytelling and narrative techniques, to contribute in creating far more compelling talks.

Finally, I also witnessed quite a range of disconnect between panel topics and the talks inside them. This is something most if not all academic conferences I’ve attended have a tendency to demonstrate. It can be a real disservice to the audience, who likely were expecting to hear one thing, and who then witness a speaker holding forth on a questionable or divergent topic instead. I’m not sure I have a ready solution to this one, but I’d be interested to hear other’s experiences in overcoming this within their event chairing capacity.

Overall then, the conference was eye opening for me, less so for the shiny satellites and exciting environmental-monitoring related technology, but more for the witnessed similarities. Perhaps in this burgeoning interdisciplinary world, it’s worth remembering that even snug and safe within our disciplinary niches, it turns out there’s a lot we all do communicatively which is broadly similar. Albeit, there are also many things we should as scholars perhaps be working towards improving too. I’ll be interested to see if my experiences in Milan, match up to my visit in July to the Utopian Studies Society conference; again an event outside my own disciplinary traditions.

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[1] For those keeping score, I managed about 40 miles in three days.

[2] Also the security level was a lot higher than a media & comms event - I've not been bomb wanded by a battalion of serious looking guards before just to get into a venue!

[3] Other slide projection packages are available.

Gareth Johnson : 23 May 2019 16:35 |  Tags: Conference Critical Earth Esa Living Observation Planet Reflections Science Space Symposium |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem