In the comments section of my post, "Promoting meritocratic practices", Scott Clifton writes:
One of my worries about conferences is different, but this may be a good place to discuss it. Rather than conferences being cliquey (some of which undoubtedly are), my worry is that many conferences rely on the participation of junior people who may receive no job market benefits as a result. Here I am thinking of conferences strictly in terms of benefits that presenters may receive and not what benefits presenters may confer to others. I have multiple conference presentations, including three at the APA and several at specialty conferences. This has netted me virtually no job market success, in part, I suspect, because conference presentations have turned out to be valueless on a CV. (I also have multiple pubs, which have also not gotten me very far in the job hunt.) But if conference presentations have no intrinsic worth on a CV, then all of the value lies in the network possibilities and feedback from audiences, which is a crap shoot. Some conferences (especially specialty conferences, which are comprised of people working in the same area) do not present opportunities for networking, since the people who will be on hiring committees were not in attendance at the conference or are inaccessible, even if they are there. And audience feedback can be anything from helpful to worthless to harmful. Yet, many conferences rely on there being submissions from junior people. Add to this the considerable travel costs associated with going to conferences and it looks like focusing on conference activity is a bad gamble for those who need a job. So, on the one hand, presenting at a conference might be without practical value for junior presenters, while, on the other hand, these conferences rely heavily on junior people submitting and presenting. Conferences then become part of the adjunctification of the discipline--relying on those who are giving cheap labor without significant return on the labor. A simple solution would be to weight more heavily conference presentations when it comes to job searches--especially "prestigious" conferences, like the APA. Until this happens, junior people should think deeply about whether they want to perpetuate this phenomenon by submitting papers to conferences.
Because I think Scott's comment raises several issues worth discussing, I thought I would dedicate the present post to discussing it (I'd like to thank Scott for agreeing to have the comment featured and discussed).
My first question is whether readers share Scott's experiences about conferences--namely, that they not very useful for junior people, particularly in terms of the job-market. For my part, I've always (rightly or wrongly) felt like conferences are excellent opportunities for:
- Practice formally presenting your work in front of an audience.
- Practice talking informally about your work, and philosophy more generally.
- Getting useful feedback on your work for the purpose of publishing.
- Learning more about what kinds of things other people are working on.
- Getting to know other people in the discipline (i.e. "networking" if you want to call it that, but friendships too).
Setting aside their intrinsic value, all of these things seem to me useful for early-career people, including the job market. (1)&(2)--practice formally and informally discussing your work--seem to me very useful for developing interview and job-talk skills. Similarly, (3)--conference-feedback--has always seemed to me very useful for revising work for publication. I've rarely--if ever--felt like conference feedback was useless or harmful. I tend to think one can almost always take something away from conference feedback, even the most vicious and obtuse/confused kind. After all, I think to myself, if one person at a conference viciously attacks or misunderstands my paper, it's likely that journal referees will respond similarly (in which case the vicious conference attack/misunderstanding can help me revise the paper to avoid a similar fate with reviewers!).
Next, I tend to think (4)--learning about what other people are working on--is not only, but can also be useful in terms of knowing what's going on in the discipline, which in turn may be relevant at on-campus interviews (since people on search committees may want to talk about their work, which may hook up with stuff you've encountered at conferences!). Finally, (5)--getting to know people--even if, as Scott notes, there are no search committee members at the conference--can still be fun for its own sake and also job-market-useful in other ways: you never know who you might strike up a conversation with at conference! Maybe you'll meet and have a good conversation with someone who'll write you a recommendation letter someday. Or, maybe you'll just meet someone who likes your paper, mentions it to a friend of theirs, who maybe will mention it to a friend of theirs, etc.--"getting your name out there", so to speak. Anyway, although I don't consider myself much of a networker, I've seen people get pretty far these ways.
All that being said, I think Scott's more general worry about conferences is worth talking about more. Because conferences are expensive to attend, not everyone has the same opportunities to attend them and enjoy whatever benefits they do confer. People in stable, well-paying positions can typically afford to attend a lot of conferences, whereas grad students and people in part-time, low-paying positions may not. This, in turn may contribute, as Scott puts it, to the "adjunctification" of the discipline. If conferences are useful but people in part-time/low-paying positions cannot attend many of them, then that may put them at significant professional disadvantage. Which raises the questions: should something be done about this? If so, what?
I would like to suggest that professional philosophy conferences should generally try to set aside some slots for "Skype" presentations, for those who cannot afford to travel. We have done precisely this at our two annual Philosophers' Cocoon Philosophy Conferences...and, in all honesty--with just a few glitches--they have worked like a charm! They gave junior people who could not afford to travel the opportunity to present their work, and logistically they worked very well: there were few problems, and on the whole the sessions weren't very different than in-person presentations. Skype participants and audience members could hear, and see, each other fine, and the Q&A sessions were great. [Note: as I write this, I have just heard that an acquaintance who presented at the APA via Skype encountered serious technical issues. I suspect such problems are more common at hotel-based conferences such as the APA].
What do you all think?
IME at conferences in three disciplines (law, polisci, philosophy), Scott's points about "networking" as you describe them (haven't read the original thread) are apt. I'd sharpen them still further, thusly:
There are essentially three kinds of conferences:
- big easy to get into conferences (BE)
- small easy to get into conferences (SE)
- small hard to get into conferences (SH)
At BE, everyone toward the lower ends of the professional hierarchy in question is clamoring to get the attention of everyone toward the higher ends in a sanguinary anarchy, and those on the higher ends are basically only there to see their friends; from this it follows that the only way for those on the lower ends to see those on the higher ends is to be friends with someone who is friends with someone. This is what friendly senior colleagues, old advisors, etc. are for.
At SE, those who are at the higher ends of the professional hierarchy are not present. It is not uncommon for those at the lower but not absolute lowest ends of said hierarchy to show up hoping to "network" with others but instead discover that they are the ones with whom others still lower down are hoping to "network."
You haven't been invited to SH until you've already made it at least to the middle of the hierarchy.
"Networking" is probably a discreditable mindset anyway; perhaps necessary in a highly competitive job world but distasteful and should be avoided to the extent possible.
As for Marcus's advantages:
1) and 2) seem to me to be worthwhile to the extent one needs the practice. Some are naturally better at talkey things than others. (For example, I went to grad school after practicing law for a while; public speaking held no fears for me.)
3) seems to me to be inversely proportional to the size and directly proportional to the specialization of the conference; at a massive disciplinary conference like APA, even if anyone shows up at your panel, there's a decent chance almost everyone in the audience will know little to nothing about your area. At a small specialized conference, however, feedback can be amazing.
4) also seems to me to be dependent on some combination of personal qualities and conference qualities. IME, I have better luck in terms of hearing interesting things by attending panels based on people rather than papers; invariably a paper with an interesting sounding title by someone I've never heard of turns out to be about Heidegger or something horrible like that, whereas uninteresting sounding paper or panel topics with people whom I know to be working in interesting areas tend to be good.
What does all this suggest in practical terms? Mainly, I think, that one should go to conferences only under the following circumstances:
1) it's invitation-only and you've been invited,
2) you have mentors attending who will introduce thou around, or
3) it's specialized in your area
Posted by: Paul Gowder | 02/23/2015 at 11:07 AM
Marcus: I agree that attending and presenting at conferences can certainly be rewarding, especially when you cut yourself loose from thinking that you must be constantly networking. And I also agree that it's a good place to find out what other people are working on--within limits. One of the most frustrating elements of the APA talks I have attended is that, because the submission deadline is so much earlier than the conferences, a depressingly large number of presenters have responded to questions in the Q&A by saying, "I am not sure why I said that. This paper was written 1 (or 1.5 or 2) years ago and my thinking has since shifted on this issue." In other words, APA conferences might not be a reliable source for figuring out what people are currently working on.
This is why I think that Paul is correct when he points out that speciality conferences are much better at both learning what people are currently working on and at providing useful feedback. One of my areas is aesthetics and I always find useful suggestions from audiences at the American Society for Aesthetics meetings. But here's the rub: as far as networking goes, the ASA meetings are not going to be very fruitful, since anyone I have met and developed a relationship with at these conferences are likely not going to be in departments advertising for a job for which I am qualified. (This last point is a bit overstated--one of my areas is also ethics, so I have applied to jobs in departments in which people I know from the aesthetics community are employed. Unfortunately, it seems that, as one of my areas is aesthetics, departments prefer not to have two people on the faculty working in this area.)
So, in order to get something out of presenting at conferences, I have a choice to make:
1. If I want to network (God, I hate networking, but I realize it's essential to getting interviews), I should go to the big conferences (on the mere hope that I will meet someone who can help my job market success).
2. If I want to get useful feedback on papers and engage in interesting and current philosophical discussion, I should go to the specialty conferences.
Unfortunately, I can no longer afford to do both (after having spent thousands of dollars as a graduate student presenting at conferences thinking that these lines on my CV would be perceived positively--no such luck apparently). If I want a job, it looks like it has to be the relatively uninteresting and unhelpful big conferences that I submit to. And that bums me out.
Posted by: Scott Clifton | 02/23/2015 at 01:28 PM
Just on the pure "CV value" (non-networking) point:
One can't infer from the fact that a CV with conference presentations on it hasn't led to a job to the claim that conference presentations are "valueless" on a CV. (As Scott Clifton notes, his publications also didn't yield a job, but it would seem similarly mistaken to infer that publications are "valueless" on a CV.)
I've only been on a few hiring committees, but conference presentations always have counted in my book, particularly if they are at good (peer reviewed) conferences, and particularly if they then lead to publications or significant works in progress. It is good for people to be putting their work out there, and getting selected for an APA is a positive sign of quality, just as getting a paper published is.
Unfortunately, given the dire state of the job market, one can do almost everything right, and still not get much job action. That doesn't mean that one doesn't get credit for checking off these different boxes, nor that one shouldn't aim to check off as many of them as one can.
Posted by: Alex Guerrero | 02/23/2015 at 03:50 PM
Regarding the value of specialty conferences, I think it goes far beyond getting feedback on individual papers. In my (limited) experience, 'networking' at big conferences rarely leads to long-term connections and does not afford junior people much opportunity to get to know those in senior positions (other than in very superficial ways). Specialty conferences, it seems to me, are usually more 'egalitarian', and it's easier to actually talk about each other's work and philosophical views. Also, let's not forget about the value of building connections within one's own age group or cohort, which can function as a support network, both at a personal level and, over time, at a professional level.
Posted by: Axel Gelfert | 02/26/2015 at 10:49 AM