A nice piece of work by Art Carden of Rhodes College. This piece is beautifully sarcastic and can be thought of as Opposite Day for conference attendees
The abstract:
Being an academic, particularly an academic economist, is a task that requires a great deal of preparation and effort. It also requires a great deal of travel. This essay provides helpful suggestions on how to be a Great Conference Participant.
One of my favorite sentences:
"Your paper should be finished no fewer than four business days after
the deadline set by your session chair and no fewer than 20 minutes before you
are actually supposed to present."
Here are some other highlights:
The abstract:
Being an academic, particularly an academic economist, is a task that requires a great deal of preparation and effort. It also requires a great deal of travel. This essay provides helpful suggestions on how to be a Great Conference Participant.
One of my favorite sentences:
"Your paper should be finished no fewer than four business days after
the deadline set by your session chair and no fewer than 20 minutes before you
are actually supposed to present."
Here are some other highlights:
"You go to conferences to do two things: first, you go to demonstrate how clever you are. Second, you go to conferences because they allow you to spend a few days in a really nice place on someone else's dime."
For Presenters:
"Make sure that the text in your slides is written in complete sentences so that they can be read to the audience (more on that later). The rule to remember is this: 'if it's in the
paper, it should be in the presentation.'"
"A good conference presentation is a lot like a good mystery novel, loaded with twists, turns, subtlety, and nuance. Don't give away the ending--you have twenty minutes to get there, so be sure to set the stage and only explain what you have to at the beginning. At conferences, there's nothing more thrilling than an action-packed thirty-second summary of the key result two minutes after your session chair has called 'time.'"
"'Twenty minutes for the papers, five minutes for discussants, five minutes for Q&A' is only a suggestion. There will be plenty of time, and people will understand that they don't have time for discussants/questions/the other papers in the session if you go over by just a little bit."
"Eye contact is your enemy. The floor is your friend. Not sure what to do with your hands? Make sure you bring a few quarters and perhaps your car keys to keep in your pocket and jingle while you're speaking."
"Incompetence and incoherence can be masked with the right combination of arrogance, derision, and condescension. When the going gets tough and someone questions why your model necessarily implies an upward-sloping demand curve for tuna salad which ultimately determines monetary policy, remember: you wrote the paper. They didn't. Make sure they understand this by the time you are finished speaking."
For Discussants:
"An axe to grind. Do you feel that economics has become too quantitative? Do you think economics is not quantitative enough? Do you have reasons for believing that investment should not be counted in GDP? Air those concerns during your discussion. You have heard it said that there is a time and a place for everything. This is that time and that place."
(Side note: I've never seen a bigger discussant "body slam" than Frank Warnock's at the 2009 ASSA meetings on a paper by Pierre Olivier Gourinchas and Helene Rey. And he mentioned many of the problems "suggested" by Carden in this paper.)
"Make sure you begin by talking about what you do, or don't do. And make sure everyone knows that what you do is much better than what they do."
For Audience Members:
"Make sure you carefully get all of your paraphernalia out while the first presenter is presenting. Make sure you have a copy of a publisher's conference booklist to ruffle through loudly in case you get bored."
For Presenters:
"Make sure that the text in your slides is written in complete sentences so that they can be read to the audience (more on that later). The rule to remember is this: 'if it's in the
paper, it should be in the presentation.'"
"A good conference presentation is a lot like a good mystery novel, loaded with twists, turns, subtlety, and nuance. Don't give away the ending--you have twenty minutes to get there, so be sure to set the stage and only explain what you have to at the beginning. At conferences, there's nothing more thrilling than an action-packed thirty-second summary of the key result two minutes after your session chair has called 'time.'"
"'Twenty minutes for the papers, five minutes for discussants, five minutes for Q&A' is only a suggestion. There will be plenty of time, and people will understand that they don't have time for discussants/questions/the other papers in the session if you go over by just a little bit."
"Eye contact is your enemy. The floor is your friend. Not sure what to do with your hands? Make sure you bring a few quarters and perhaps your car keys to keep in your pocket and jingle while you're speaking."
"Incompetence and incoherence can be masked with the right combination of arrogance, derision, and condescension. When the going gets tough and someone questions why your model necessarily implies an upward-sloping demand curve for tuna salad which ultimately determines monetary policy, remember: you wrote the paper. They didn't. Make sure they understand this by the time you are finished speaking."
For Discussants:
"An axe to grind. Do you feel that economics has become too quantitative? Do you think economics is not quantitative enough? Do you have reasons for believing that investment should not be counted in GDP? Air those concerns during your discussion. You have heard it said that there is a time and a place for everything. This is that time and that place."
(Side note: I've never seen a bigger discussant "body slam" than Frank Warnock's at the 2009 ASSA meetings on a paper by Pierre Olivier Gourinchas and Helene Rey. And he mentioned many of the problems "suggested" by Carden in this paper.)
"Make sure you begin by talking about what you do, or don't do. And make sure everyone knows that what you do is much better than what they do."
For Audience Members:
"Make sure you carefully get all of your paraphernalia out while the first presenter is presenting. Make sure you have a copy of a publisher's conference booklist to ruffle through loudly in case you get bored."
