Slow Conferencing

A Recipe for Connection in Troubled Times

Abstract

The international conference comes at a cost in terms of our carbon footprint, but it also comes at a cost in terms of building broad communities of interest - particularly for those located in far flung parts of the globe where air travel is prohibitive, and even those who are relatively close but not living close to an airport hub. How might we think alternative forms of connection in a way that doesn’t seem like the poor cousin to the big conference, with its frisson of seeing a new place, reconnecting with old friends, making important employment connections, packing a room of attendees or making that unplanned connection with another academic who is working on parallel tracks? Here I propose two recipes for slow conferencing.