Conferencing

I have been away from this Blog for nearly a week. I travelled from Connecticut to Washington, DC for the 45th Annual Easter Academy of Management conference. In less than a month, we will open the 35th Organizational Behavior Teaching Conference in Boston. I completed service on the EAM Board of Governors at this May meeting and will cap off a year and a half of constant work as OBTC 2008 Program Coordinator. I have a first-hand, from the-back-room , view of these two events. It is a tremendous,all-volunteer undertaking to keep each of these conference going year after year. We run them and attend them at considerable financial cost.

Is conferencing really this important to us a management educators?

Each of us determines the value of spending this rare time in face to face contact with colleagues from near and far. Yet, others who invest in our travel, sponsor our meetings, and otherwise make sure the 45th and 35th happen and the 46th and 36th seem sure to follow, may wonder about their payback.

I will not go on to preach to the choir about why, for example, OBTC 2008 will have a much enlivened and reinvigorated teaching force of over 300 strong issuing forth from our Saturday closing. But I will say one thing.

We are THE principle means of production for colleges, universities and consulting firms. Millions are spent keeping our campuses and technologies maintained and replenished. Conferences like EAM and OBTC cost far less and do far more to enhance the quality of what our learners experience as we teach them and as they teach themselves by reading what we publish. The payback is that we come back rejuvenated and more fully connected to our global academic community.

I look at these end of academic year events as annual professorial tune-ups. We exchange new ideas, tell our stories, put human faces on names we see in e-mails, at the tops of articles, or on book covers. We appreciate and are appreciated.

We come from our train, plane, or road trips weary and somewhat "taught out". I can attest to how I think most of us feel upon return to our homes. Energized. Better known by those in my field. Knowing better that I am in just the right field to sustain my desire to go on teaching, now on the first day of my 65th year.

I look at my Do List for OBTC 2008 and see that I'll have to be on-task right up to the moment we greet the first arrival; so will my fellow coordinators at Babson College Keith Rollag and Danna Greenberg. I have not the slightest doubt that it will be worth putting in the rest of these countless hours to polish off this List. Conferencing is our way of saying to each other "We'll see you next year. Bring stories and your best new stuff." (and so I will)