Back from AAG Tampa, but with Mixed Feelings...

I recently attended the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) in Tampa, Florida. This was my second experience at the AAG - a mega-conference with over 6000 participants! This time I had some plans of how to feel less like a little fish swimming in an enormous ocean. But despite employing a few tricks for getting the most out of my experience, I left Tampa with slightly mixed feelings about what I had accomplished, or at least some unease about my sense of purpose and place at such a massive scholarly event.

Don't get me wrong, the experience was overall a positive one: Everything from the warmer weather to the networking opportunities and chance to see some big name speakers made for a fulfilling trip. I saw scholars talk who've I've been wanting to see present (including Braun, Bakker, Huber, Hulme, McCarthy and others), I met others I've been meaning to meet (including Peet and North), and made other important connections with a number of fellow graduate students from various parts of the world. I also had a two hour stretch of 'leisure time' which allowed me to visit a living museum in downtown Tampa - a warship which my grandfather actually sailed on in WWII (though that story will be the topic of my next post!).

Yet ultimately I can't help feeling like the AAG is just too big to provide a 'complete' experience - one in which a participant can feel like they are a) making a genuine contribution to the conference, and b) really get immersed in ideas and debates in a meaningful way. Well, maybe it is possible, and I thought that organizing my own session was the way to make this happen. But I don't think it was quite enough in this instance: 1 hour and 40 minutes is not enough time to hash out ideas, especially when the formal presentations take up at least 2/3 of that time. Yes, I did get some good useful feedback on my paper from the discussant, fellow presenters, and audience. But my 'contribution' to this year's AAG pretty much ended there. I may have gotten enough out of the AAG to make the trip worthwhile, but I didn't feel like I had enough time or session presence to put enough in to the AAG to result in a 'complete' experience. There were some sessions I attended where I may have felt compelled to participate in the discussion, but in most cases the session either ended before I had a chance to gather my thoughts, OR it was in the opposite conference site and so I missed the first half of the presentations (thereby not feeling comfortable contributing to a discussion which I had already partly missed).

There are some scholars who seem to easily immerse themselves in meaningful debate at the AAG, but if you troll the conference program you will find that they participate in numerous capacities - they organize multiple sessions, chair here, act as a discussant there, and present in yet another session. They come to the conference with colleagues, or acquaintances whom they plan to meet or collaborate with. I unfortunately was not in Tampa for long enough to participate to that degree, but knowing myself, that level of participation would have required enormous amounts of pre-conference preparation time (though clearly some of these people can just 'wing it').

The Congress of the CFHSS in Canada is about the same size as the AAG, but one tends to find that balance of 'contribution' and 'absorption' much more easily at Congress - and I think it's because the latter is not just one conference but rather about 60 simultaneous conferences. That makes a difference - the sense of collegiality and contribution and discussion I get when I participate at the Environmental Studies Association of Canada (ESAC's) annual meeting (which is held at Congress), for instance, reminds me that it is possible to have a 'complete' academic conference experience and find my niche within a large event of many thousands of people...

There is of course the issue of whether the AAG is even sustainable as an academic conference, which always makes me a little uneasy. Nevins (2013) and others have asked how scholars (Geographers in particular) can justify the enormous ecological footprint of a massive conference like this - often when those very scholars deplore the inaction of governments, corporations or other institutions and individuals on climate change. That is a whole other can of worms that I'll come back to at this blog in the future.

Okay... so what's the take home? IF (and that is now an 'if') I do do the AAG again, I think I will have to pull out some additional stops and prepare to make this a complete experience. I catalogue some of these thoughts here, partly to remind myself in the future... but:
- Don't go unless it's reasonably close and easy to get there without major GHG footprint;
- Stay for at least three full conference days, and don't stay at the big hotels where the conference is held - stay in a vibrant or historical part of town (preferably rent an apartment for the stay with colleagues);
- Plan to go with colleagues, and plan (ahead of time) to meet up with others whom you've met before;
- Pre-plan social events in conjunction with panels ("let's meet the night of our session");
- Co-organize sessions, speak in others, and seek another panel in which to act as a discussant;
- The AAG's specific 'panel' format seems to lend itself to better interactive discussion than the 'paper session' format;
- Attend the keynotes and plan ahead to meet up with people interested in taking the discussion further (perhaps at the pub).
- If planning a session, keep the CFP simple, appeal to big broad themes which will get people talking and sharing ideas.

If you (yeah, you reading this) have any thoughts to share on the AAG or making the most of academic conference-going, please share!