post festum
Been back nearly a fortnight from a short trip to Britain, which took in conferences at Cambridge and Leicester, and a day with friends in Royal Leamington Spa. As usual with conferences, the most enjoyable part for me was the conversation outside the formal proceedings - lots of faces placed to names, lots of intriguing experiences and perspectives to learn about. It was the same with the Italian Effect conference in Sydney a few years ago, and indeed every other conference I’ve been to, academic or otherwise (eg the last local IWW conference I attended) - it’s the stuff that happens in the corridors, in the bars and cafes, on the sidewalks and elsewhere that makes it worthwhile.
There’s been a certain controversy around the Cambridge gathering, voiced in forums like aut-op-sy and the Mute site. Chris Carlsson’s blog Attitude Adjustor does a good job of capturing much of the mood in the circles I mixed in. As for some of the criticisms raised to date: I wish I’d had the presence of mind to look more carefully weeks before at the conference program structure, and to make suggestions about session lengths etc - but of course I didn’t. To the extent that speakers didn’t always leave time for discussion after their presentations - well, I was as guilty as anyone on that score, unfortunately. I was convinced I could get what I wanted to say down to ten minutes and leave a whole 20 minutes for discussion (whether of my paper or any other conference theme, I grandly announced), but I was sadly mistaken. How embarrassment. For those who care, the paper itself is up at the conference site, minus the diagrams (although the main one can be found at Chris’ site). As for the formal presentations, the highlight for me in terms of both content and theatre was Emma’s paper (which also provided further ammunition against the ill-considered use of categories like ‘immaterial labour’) …
So far I haven’t seen any accounts of the Leicester conference, which is a pity. Rather smaller in size (about 35 people, perhaps half of whom had been at Cambridge as well), there was quite a bit of time programmed in for discussion of and around presentations. Amongst other things, it was great there to meet Nate at last, to see the video of NoTAV that Emi and Raf had compiled, to catch up again briefly with both Arianna and the Otonom comrades, and to meet many of the people associated in some way with the Leicester ‘Management Centre’.
Thursday was fun too, meeting in London with Nate, Alberto and Nina (she of the excellent blog infinite thØught), then visiting the social centre in Russell Square with Emma, Nate and Alberto, before a superior pizza with John, Emma and Nate (tag team discussions all day, in other words). And the obligatory quick visit to Hamley’s thrown in there somewhere, for good measure.
