This post gives me two reasons to no longer feel bad for dragging you to the Ciceronian Society Conference! One year at Ciceronian we need to do a McCarthy panel.
I had similar experiences at conferences in the discipline of philosophy (during 1995-2020). What drives many to "present" or "comment" at such conferences is, I suspect, "C.V. padding," so that academics can "prove" to annual review committees on the road to tenure/promotion that they have been "productive."
This definitely aligns with my experience at most conferences vs a Christians for Impact conference I attended this fall. It was set up way better to encourage organic networking, and I didn’t realize how important having a common worldview would be until I got there.
This post gives me two reasons to no longer feel bad for dragging you to the Ciceronian Society Conference! One year at Ciceronian we need to do a McCarthy panel.
You left out the best reason to go to any academic conference: the deals on books from academic publishers!
I had similar experiences at conferences in the discipline of philosophy (during 1995-2020). What drives many to "present" or "comment" at such conferences is, I suspect, "C.V. padding," so that academics can "prove" to annual review committees on the road to tenure/promotion that they have been "productive."
I'm not academic, but I have friends who are and when they describe academic conferences I always ask them "Why do you go to these things?"
I ask myself this every time I decide to go to one again.
If you want to see how bad they can get, try attending a Composition conference. Abysmal.
This definitely aligns with my experience at most conferences vs a Christians for Impact conference I attended this fall. It was set up way better to encourage organic networking, and I didn’t realize how important having a common worldview would be until I got there.