Really interesting post, Collin — here are a couple thoughts it provoked for me.
First, the distinction you pose between a flagship conference and an inclusive conference is an interesting one. I am actually not on the inclusion bandwagon, by which I mean that I don’t think greater inclusion is automatically better than greater exclusion, and I believe “the field” (that is, its leading administrative voices) do think so, and pretty uncritically at that. So to ponder the idea (whether this is what you meant or not, this is what I think after reading your post) that “flagship” might demand some exclusivity — well, it would absolutely be a different direction than we’re going. Because I actually want space for both inclusive and flagship, I’m drawn again (this happens every year) to the idea that we’re doing it wrong with 1) no regional confs and 2) abstract-only, rather than full-paper, proposals. And THANK YOU for noting the RIDICULOUS lag-time between proposal and conference. I’m sorry, it’s STUPID (anyone from C’s EB reading, please?) to have a 10-month gap between proposal and presentation.
Second, though, with reference to your suggestion that the conf ultimately caters to newcomers and stars … I wish I saw that much predictability in its choices. My sense is that the abstract-only proposal so misrepresents what will be actual presentations that we could usually get better quality of panel(ist)s just by flipping coins. I have burned *so* much time in bad panels during my (mere) ~10 years of attending / often presenting. (I think I’m around 50% on acceptance rate at this point, maybe a bit higher.) What you’re saying, then, about whether Stage I/II reviewers have a conscious or unconscious interest in accessibility and broad audience brings in a variable that I frankly hadn’t considered. It might explain some things.
It might, in any event, be enough to say that reviewers have an impossible job — and if that is the case, then why aren’t we revising the conf setup to make reviewers’ task non-ludicrous? Thanks for the food for thought.
Yeah, that lag time is (I think) one of the big leftovers from the time when the process was conducted via the USPS. Think about all the paper that was generated and the time it must have taken making copies, sending packets, receiving them, collating, blah blah blah. And given those necessities, that lag time makes (unfortunate) sense. They’re starting to rethink some of this, it seems, but could go a lot further.
And I’m right there with you about the match between abstract and paper, which is another unfortunate side-effect of the really long conference cycle. There are times when I literally forget some of what I was thinking when I proposed something, but I’ve been to panels where presenters have explicitly said that they proposed one thing to “get on the program” and proceeded to do something different. Short, unrepresentative abstracts are another arbitrary holdover from the days when word limits mattered because they translated to page counts.
All of this [Collin’s observations] make me even more nostalgic for the days when pre-conference workshops were affordable, i.e. people could come to them and not get bankrupted by the extra travel/housing day. I think one of the reasons I got out of the habit of attending lots of panels is what Collin describes here–panels that seemed like they were my interest area often turned out to be rehashes of old ideas. But I also found I was getting what I needed out those pre- and post-conference venues. I don’t remember exactly, but I think as many as three of the six years I co-chaired the Qualitative Research Network (which got me funding), I didn’t even submit anything else. Working with a group of that size for several hours, in addition to the prep Heidi and I did, was plenty for one conference and very, very rewarding.
But one of the big changes since I started going in the late 90s was the shunting of those into more compact times to make more room on the program for panels so people could get “credit” for them.
[Pipe Dream Alert} So another model to put alongside Doug’s suggestions about regionals and more complete proposals (which I actually disagree with, but not enough to fight about) is the RSA model, which intersperses the Institutes among the conference meetings (the periods would have be different, obviously), as a way of supporting the more intensive, collaborate time the workshops offer but used to offer more of. The SIGs are good, but they’re just not enough time–and I don’t think there’s much to be done about that within the parameters of the current structure.
To add to what you’re saying here Colin is something I posted on Facebook (I think on your page, too): it seems to me that this year’s call was a particularly hard swing toward some of the traditional territory of NCTE and CCCC and away from emerging issues. The theme of “public works” emphasized “in the trenches” freshmen comp, wpa work, students at risk, transitions from high school to college, public policy, public research, public funding, public action, etc. There was very little attention in the call for issues like new media, digital humanities, rhetorical theory, etc., and I have to wonder if that isn’t being indicated by some of the rejections.
Or not. Like you, I started going to the CCCCs quite a while ago (I think my first one was 1995), and like you, I had a streak of several years straight where I was accepted. And like you– since 2007 to be precise– my batting average has been pretty bad. I don’t know if it’s me or if it’s the CCCCs, if my proposals have been too “out there,” if the CCCCs has become more conservative, both, neither, etc., or if it is just literally the law of averages catching up with me.
And like you, the CCCCs doesn’t really need me and I don’t need the CCCCs as much as I once did. Oh, I still like to go because it means catching up with old friends face to face and usually over food and beverages, seeing a few “fancy-pants” scholars live and in person, etc., but rarely do I really “learn” anything at this point. I don’t say that to suggest I’m above it all– far from it– but if you’ve been going to anything for almost 20 years, there’s a pretty good point that you’re going to start hearing the same things over and over.
Just one quick note to Doug (as I’ve said a lot on FB already!), the lag time is, as Collin points out, somewhat necessary. HQ has to get the whole program together–a huge feat in itself–plus it has to get people to register for the conference and/or become members, and that can take for.ev.er. This is related to room arrangements, etc. I don’t know what the magic minimum number of months needed is, but before I declare that we should submit proposals in, say, October for December acceptance–which would mean even less time to *read* them at the two stages, which also includes rounding up volunteers to read, giving them time to read (and send reminders), and giving the program chair time to look over every single proposal (which he/she does)–we would need to ask Eileen Maley and company how *fast* she can put together a conference that includes hundreds of sessions. I personally think 10 months is lightening-quick. And it’s way better than submitting, say, an NEH proposal–for that, you got to predict your work schedule two years out.
Kelly Ritter
July 26, 2012 9:04 am
Or, you know, lightning-quick. Though lightening is also a relevant term if we are talking about reducing the conference size, I guess. 🙁
beth brunk
July 26, 2012 9:33 am
Nice one, CB. Thanks for posting it.
One thing that I’m still chewing on in addition to your thoughts: 2012 CCCC’s: win Writing Program Certificate of Excellence. 2013 CCCC’s: proposal about said program rejected. My would-be-co-presenters were no slouches either. Not that I was expecting a red carpet roll out, but I might expect a bit of continuity?!?
I’ve always said our field is more a federation than a discipline. We’re a lot like Psychology or Anthropology, areas of subject study that group together vastly different methodologies and interests under one heading. I, too, have had the trajectory with the conference that you describe, sometimes feeling as though the stronger my panel is, the more likely it will get rejected. I think to move toward the conference as progress model that you suggest, we would need to establish active SIG’s or other divisions that share the burden of shaping some portion of the conference. Alternatively, we could start more sub-conferences in key areas (this, arguably, is already happening). The growth, expansion, diversity, and inclusion of our field are all pluses. We just need to rethink how we plan conferences to achieve both breadth and depth.
Yeah, I’ve thought about the idea that subconferences might be a better model for moving forward, CP, and I actually like it a lot. I think that one of the things that has held us up a little is our tendency to define ourselves and our conference in opposition to the way MLA works. While that model has its own suite of problems, it does do certain things well, and I have to believe that there are some things that we can learn from that model and incorporate without necessarily losing the openness we (rightfully) pride ourselves on.
Jumping in a bit late, but I did follow a lot of that FB talk, and I am among those rejected this year as well. I would speculate for much the same reason as you suggest: a lack of (presumed) appeal for the C’s audience. A few years back, Derek and I joked about the idea of an RFID tag in each badge that would track when a person entered and exited a session room. What would we see? My hypothesis is that we would see that more than a dozen largely non-communicating sub conferences are already going on in parallel at C’s. I’ve been to maybe five or six of these things in a row, and I find myself increasingly attending panels by the same community of presenters. When I step outside of that community, 90% of the time I find myself bored or annoyed (regardless of whether I’m checking out “big names” or some random panel). It’s just not worth it. On the other hand, watching those same panelists is getting a little repetitive as well, in part because every panel has to be directed to the noob. So I will miss seeing friends, but I will not miss attending panels.
Yeah, I feel the same way (obviously!). I still think there are some obvious things that they could do to reclaim certain portions of their audience. I love the idea of the supersessions that RSA does, for example, and back in the day I blogged about the idea of doing a series of featured sessions about that year’s finalists for the book award (with the authors themselves as respondents). But the chances stuff like that would happen? I’ve never been horribly optimistic.
Thanks for the forum and for the thoughts, CGB! A few disconnected thoughts:
One is the question of how long it takes to coordinate the conference. Much larger events are planned much faster, with full proceedings (and two rounds of review). But they cost as much as triple as CCCC tends to run. The CCCC is still very inexpensive compared to other conferences.
Another is the way the categories of submission influence the total number of sessions in a given category. In short, the more submissions, the more session get on the panel. This creates a quality problem because with the total number of available slots limited, it is possible for the 86th ranked session in First-Year Writing Pedagogy to make the program while the 3rd ranked paper in Histories of Rhetoric gets rejected. Quantity trumps quality down our long tail of objects of inquiry.
This approach to making number of sessions proportional to number of proposals is a means to achieve some of the goals Collin mentions: inclusivity, broad appeal. It may also protect some categories from disappearing entirely by ensuring that all have at least some presence. But it also stacks the program with sessions of diminishing quality from what are arguably over-represented categories.
FWIW: I’m in favor of papers & proceedings too. I go to a number of conferences that do these, and I am always grateful for the way proceedings help good ideas I hear persist, circulate, and be of use far after the conference is over. Many of the conferences I attend that require papers ahead of time are attended by folks working full time in non-academic, professional jobs (60+ hours a week) for which writing and publishing are not directly rewarded. I say this because it is not the case that “we” are too busy. We just haven’t valued – and this is really odd to me – putting our good ideas in writing enough to ask ourselves to do so.
Thanks for dropping by, Bill. Can I just say yes, yes, yes, and yes? 🙂
It’s a strange dynamic, to be sure. On the one hand, more scholarship is generated for that week than at any other time during the year in our field; on the other, such an overwhelming portion of it is basically disposable. From the anachronistically small word counts for proposals, to the audience restrictions, to the absence of any sort of proceedings, it’s an odd space where research both seems to matter a lot and yet not at all. And the timing of the annual deadline is such that we’re encourage to dash something off–many years, I suspect a lot of us don’t have time to do much more than that.
I do think there are ways that it could change that wouldn’t necessarily sacrifice the comparative advantages that the conference has (like its relative cost), but like Alex said in his post, I’m not sure that there are that many folks in the field who see it as a problem to be fixed.
cgb
oh, and I could write a whole post on what I think of (punning on KB) as the “problem of parity” you describe above (86 vs 3). I’ve heard way too many otherwise smart people justify the proportional acceptance system without really understanding what it entails…
Doug Downs
July 26, 2012 1:27 amReally interesting post, Collin — here are a couple thoughts it provoked for me.
First, the distinction you pose between a flagship conference and an inclusive conference is an interesting one. I am actually not on the inclusion bandwagon, by which I mean that I don’t think greater inclusion is automatically better than greater exclusion, and I believe “the field” (that is, its leading administrative voices) do think so, and pretty uncritically at that. So to ponder the idea (whether this is what you meant or not, this is what I think after reading your post) that “flagship” might demand some exclusivity — well, it would absolutely be a different direction than we’re going. Because I actually want space for both inclusive and flagship, I’m drawn again (this happens every year) to the idea that we’re doing it wrong with 1) no regional confs and 2) abstract-only, rather than full-paper, proposals. And THANK YOU for noting the RIDICULOUS lag-time between proposal and conference. I’m sorry, it’s STUPID (anyone from C’s EB reading, please?) to have a 10-month gap between proposal and presentation.
Second, though, with reference to your suggestion that the conf ultimately caters to newcomers and stars … I wish I saw that much predictability in its choices. My sense is that the abstract-only proposal so misrepresents what will be actual presentations that we could usually get better quality of panel(ist)s just by flipping coins. I have burned *so* much time in bad panels during my (mere) ~10 years of attending / often presenting. (I think I’m around 50% on acceptance rate at this point, maybe a bit higher.) What you’re saying, then, about whether Stage I/II reviewers have a conscious or unconscious interest in accessibility and broad audience brings in a variable that I frankly hadn’t considered. It might explain some things.
It might, in any event, be enough to say that reviewers have an impossible job — and if that is the case, then why aren’t we revising the conf setup to make reviewers’ task non-ludicrous? Thanks for the food for thought.
Collin
July 26, 2012 2:19 amYeah, that lag time is (I think) one of the big leftovers from the time when the process was conducted via the USPS. Think about all the paper that was generated and the time it must have taken making copies, sending packets, receiving them, collating, blah blah blah. And given those necessities, that lag time makes (unfortunate) sense. They’re starting to rethink some of this, it seems, but could go a lot further.
And I’m right there with you about the match between abstract and paper, which is another unfortunate side-effect of the really long conference cycle. There are times when I literally forget some of what I was thinking when I proposed something, but I’ve been to panels where presenters have explicitly said that they proposed one thing to “get on the program” and proceeded to do something different. Short, unrepresentative abstracts are another arbitrary holdover from the days when word limits mattered because they translated to page counts.
Thanks for the comments…
@betajames
July 26, 2012 7:20 am#4C13 just not that into you? http://t.co/WKNOMfq5
Seth
July 26, 2012 7:49 amAll of this [Collin’s observations] make me even more nostalgic for the days when pre-conference workshops were affordable, i.e. people could come to them and not get bankrupted by the extra travel/housing day. I think one of the reasons I got out of the habit of attending lots of panels is what Collin describes here–panels that seemed like they were my interest area often turned out to be rehashes of old ideas. But I also found I was getting what I needed out those pre- and post-conference venues. I don’t remember exactly, but I think as many as three of the six years I co-chaired the Qualitative Research Network (which got me funding), I didn’t even submit anything else. Working with a group of that size for several hours, in addition to the prep Heidi and I did, was plenty for one conference and very, very rewarding.
But one of the big changes since I started going in the late 90s was the shunting of those into more compact times to make more room on the program for panels so people could get “credit” for them.
[Pipe Dream Alert} So another model to put alongside Doug’s suggestions about regionals and more complete proposals (which I actually disagree with, but not enough to fight about) is the RSA model, which intersperses the Institutes among the conference meetings (the periods would have be different, obviously), as a way of supporting the more intensive, collaborate time the workshops offer but used to offer more of. The SIGs are good, but they’re just not enough time–and I don’t think there’s much to be done about that within the parameters of the current structure.
Steven D. Krause
July 26, 2012 7:52 amTo add to what you’re saying here Colin is something I posted on Facebook (I think on your page, too): it seems to me that this year’s call was a particularly hard swing toward some of the traditional territory of NCTE and CCCC and away from emerging issues. The theme of “public works” emphasized “in the trenches” freshmen comp, wpa work, students at risk, transitions from high school to college, public policy, public research, public funding, public action, etc. There was very little attention in the call for issues like new media, digital humanities, rhetorical theory, etc., and I have to wonder if that isn’t being indicated by some of the rejections.
Or not. Like you, I started going to the CCCCs quite a while ago (I think my first one was 1995), and like you, I had a streak of several years straight where I was accepted. And like you– since 2007 to be precise– my batting average has been pretty bad. I don’t know if it’s me or if it’s the CCCCs, if my proposals have been too “out there,” if the CCCCs has become more conservative, both, neither, etc., or if it is just literally the law of averages catching up with me.
And like you, the CCCCs doesn’t really need me and I don’t need the CCCCs as much as I once did. Oh, I still like to go because it means catching up with old friends face to face and usually over food and beverages, seeing a few “fancy-pants” scholars live and in person, etc., but rarely do I really “learn” anything at this point. I don’t say that to suggest I’m above it all– far from it– but if you’ve been going to anything for almost 20 years, there’s a pretty good point that you’re going to start hearing the same things over and over.
@cindy091896
July 26, 2012 8:53 am4Cs just not that into you? | via @cgbrooke http://t.co/Qyw2yTDp
Kelly Ritter
July 26, 2012 9:02 amJust one quick note to Doug (as I’ve said a lot on FB already!), the lag time is, as Collin points out, somewhat necessary. HQ has to get the whole program together–a huge feat in itself–plus it has to get people to register for the conference and/or become members, and that can take for.ev.er. This is related to room arrangements, etc. I don’t know what the magic minimum number of months needed is, but before I declare that we should submit proposals in, say, October for December acceptance–which would mean even less time to *read* them at the two stages, which also includes rounding up volunteers to read, giving them time to read (and send reminders), and giving the program chair time to look over every single proposal (which he/she does)–we would need to ask Eileen Maley and company how *fast* she can put together a conference that includes hundreds of sessions. I personally think 10 months is lightening-quick. And it’s way better than submitting, say, an NEH proposal–for that, you got to predict your work schedule two years out.
Kelly Ritter
July 26, 2012 9:04 amOr, you know, lightning-quick. Though lightening is also a relevant term if we are talking about reducing the conference size, I guess. 🙁
beth brunk
July 26, 2012 9:33 amNice one, CB. Thanks for posting it.
One thing that I’m still chewing on in addition to your thoughts: 2012 CCCC’s: win Writing Program Certificate of Excellence. 2013 CCCC’s: proposal about said program rejected. My would-be-co-presenters were no slouches either. Not that I was expecting a red carpet roll out, but I might expect a bit of continuity?!?
Catherine Prendergast
July 26, 2012 9:47 amI’ve always said our field is more a federation than a discipline. We’re a lot like Psychology or Anthropology, areas of subject study that group together vastly different methodologies and interests under one heading. I, too, have had the trajectory with the conference that you describe, sometimes feeling as though the stronger my panel is, the more likely it will get rejected. I think to move toward the conference as progress model that you suggest, we would need to establish active SIG’s or other divisions that share the burden of shaping some portion of the conference. Alternatively, we could start more sub-conferences in key areas (this, arguably, is already happening). The growth, expansion, diversity, and inclusion of our field are all pluses. We just need to rethink how we plan conferences to achieve both breadth and depth.
Collin
July 26, 2012 1:20 pmYeah, I’ve thought about the idea that subconferences might be a better model for moving forward, CP, and I actually like it a lot. I think that one of the things that has held us up a little is our tendency to define ourselves and our conference in opposition to the way MLA works. While that model has its own suite of problems, it does do certain things well, and I have to believe that there are some things that we can learn from that model and incorporate without necessarily losing the openness we (rightfully) pride ourselves on.
@aristotlejulep
July 26, 2012 10:04 am4Cs just not that into you? | Collin Gifford Brooke http://t.co/pKjOgwDx via @cgbrooke
@DavidOSays
July 26, 2012 10:46 am4Cs just not that into you? http://t.co/iyc2EsIj / I’m sorry, but why would anyone waste their time listening to talks by grad students?
Alex Reid
July 31, 2012 1:05 pmJumping in a bit late, but I did follow a lot of that FB talk, and I am among those rejected this year as well. I would speculate for much the same reason as you suggest: a lack of (presumed) appeal for the C’s audience. A few years back, Derek and I joked about the idea of an RFID tag in each badge that would track when a person entered and exited a session room. What would we see? My hypothesis is that we would see that more than a dozen largely non-communicating sub conferences are already going on in parallel at C’s. I’ve been to maybe five or six of these things in a row, and I find myself increasingly attending panels by the same community of presenters. When I step outside of that community, 90% of the time I find myself bored or annoyed (regardless of whether I’m checking out “big names” or some random panel). It’s just not worth it. On the other hand, watching those same panelists is getting a little repetitive as well, in part because every panel has to be directed to the noob. So I will miss seeing friends, but I will not miss attending panels.
Collin
August 1, 2012 1:28 pmYeah, I feel the same way (obviously!). I still think there are some obvious things that they could do to reclaim certain portions of their audience. I love the idea of the supersessions that RSA does, for example, and back in the day I blogged about the idea of doing a series of featured sessions about that year’s finalists for the book award (with the authors themselves as respondents). But the chances stuff like that would happen? I’ve never been horribly optimistic.
(throwing in a quick link to your post: http://www.alex-reid.net/2012/08/academic-conferences-and-disciplinary-identity.html)
Thanks!
cgb
Bill H-D
August 2, 2012 1:34 pmThanks for the forum and for the thoughts, CGB! A few disconnected thoughts:
One is the question of how long it takes to coordinate the conference. Much larger events are planned much faster, with full proceedings (and two rounds of review). But they cost as much as triple as CCCC tends to run. The CCCC is still very inexpensive compared to other conferences.
Another is the way the categories of submission influence the total number of sessions in a given category. In short, the more submissions, the more session get on the panel. This creates a quality problem because with the total number of available slots limited, it is possible for the 86th ranked session in First-Year Writing Pedagogy to make the program while the 3rd ranked paper in Histories of Rhetoric gets rejected. Quantity trumps quality down our long tail of objects of inquiry.
This approach to making number of sessions proportional to number of proposals is a means to achieve some of the goals Collin mentions: inclusivity, broad appeal. It may also protect some categories from disappearing entirely by ensuring that all have at least some presence. But it also stacks the program with sessions of diminishing quality from what are arguably over-represented categories.
FWIW: I’m in favor of papers & proceedings too. I go to a number of conferences that do these, and I am always grateful for the way proceedings help good ideas I hear persist, circulate, and be of use far after the conference is over. Many of the conferences I attend that require papers ahead of time are attended by folks working full time in non-academic, professional jobs (60+ hours a week) for which writing and publishing are not directly rewarded. I say this because it is not the case that “we” are too busy. We just haven’t valued – and this is really odd to me – putting our good ideas in writing enough to ask ourselves to do so.
Collin
August 2, 2012 2:14 pmThanks for dropping by, Bill. Can I just say yes, yes, yes, and yes? 🙂
It’s a strange dynamic, to be sure. On the one hand, more scholarship is generated for that week than at any other time during the year in our field; on the other, such an overwhelming portion of it is basically disposable. From the anachronistically small word counts for proposals, to the audience restrictions, to the absence of any sort of proceedings, it’s an odd space where research both seems to matter a lot and yet not at all. And the timing of the annual deadline is such that we’re encourage to dash something off–many years, I suspect a lot of us don’t have time to do much more than that.
I do think there are ways that it could change that wouldn’t necessarily sacrifice the comparative advantages that the conference has (like its relative cost), but like Alex said in his post, I’m not sure that there are that many folks in the field who see it as a problem to be fixed.
cgb
oh, and I could write a whole post on what I think of (punning on KB) as the “problem of parity” you describe above (86 vs 3). I’ve heard way too many otherwise smart people justify the proportional acceptance system without really understanding what it entails…