The Book Room

Faculty members attend conferences that are gatherings of professionals and students who share their interests. There are different types of conferences; I go to ones that focus on the areas of scholarship that interest me, ecology and archaeology. Attending a conference can either be enjoyable or miserable depending upon whether or not you know other people there or, if not, depending on how friendly people are at a particular conference. What do professors do at conferences?

One thing that we do is present results of our research. We usually do this in research talks, which are short PowerPoint presentations. We may instead give a poster presentation, which I like because you stand with your poster for a period of time during which people get to come and talk with you about your research. Interestingly, members of the poster audience tend not to read you poster carefully, and they almost always ask you for a “Reader’s Digest” rundown of it.

Although presentations are important, the reason most of us go to conferences is to network with colleagues. New ideas may emerge, collaborations may be initiated, and/or colleagues may simply discuss ideas that they have. This is a lot of fun, and in my opinion it provides fuel for new ideas in research and teaching. It is sharing these new ideas with colleagues that energizes professors to do research during their day-to-day lives.

Many conferences have book fairs where publishers display their wares. I make several trips there to view books, but the book room is a great place to socialize and network because folks tend to gather there throughout the conference. Many a spontaneous conversation has started in the book room. In 2003, I contacted a colleague of mine whose papers I had recently read; I really enjoyed her papers and decided to ask her if she would like to meet at the annual archaeology conference in Milwaukee later that spring to discuss ideas. She suggested that we "meet in the book room."

My rendition of the story goes like this; I walked through the book room several times and saw her talking to another colleague. Trying to be visible but respectful, I walked by, say ten times. She never realized I was there. Finally, I just interrupted the conversation. It’s a good thing I did; a year later we were married. So, yes, I met my wife in the book room, yes she ignored me for a good twenty minutes before talking with me.

Now, I thought she might have done so disrespectfully, but I was not sure. Later that summer I visited her in New Zealand while she was doing research. I bought her some flowers (courtship ritual), and put them on the coffee table in the middle of her small studio apartment (common sense). She walked around them for roughly six hours without realizing they were there! I realized the book room thing was not personal. She’ll tell both stories differently if you ask her… but she’s wrong.

So, you never know what will happen at conferences.