My basic view is that modern communication technology makes it pretty easy to communicate and exchange ideas with people, as long as you already have a relationship with those people. It’s less well suited for forming relationships because it’s not so good at helping you discover people outside what you think you’re interested in (because we tend to go to websites catering to our interests), and because it’s a bit harder to build deep trust without face to face meetings.
In-person events based around groups that have common interests but don’t already know each other can be really useful for forging deeper relationships, and the internet means those relationships can remain productive at a distance. They can also be useful for meeting new people, if these meetings are packed with people you don’t already know and the meetings force you to interact with new people (for example, by making you queue for a buffet, find a table with an opening, sit next to someone on a bus to a second location, circulate around and look at posters, etc.).
Maybe big conferences aren’t that good for this kind of thing, as Feynman and Eric speculate? At a big conference, you’re more likely to know more people and so you might end up just hanging out with them and not meeting new people. And perhaps, knowing you unlikely to run into any given person a second time, it just doesn’t feel as important to introduce yourself and get to know them? Or maybe it just takes two or three minor encounters to really build a relationship for many people.
For more on academic conferences, I wrote something here.
Thanks, Matt, for the thoughtful response. My key take-aways are that (1) in person events are helpful to get new relationships going because of trust & discovery, and (2) we should keep these meeting small (or create smaller sessions in larger meetings) and (3) purposefully get people together who otherwise might not talk, and ideally have them not just be passive but work on something together in those sessions. Some good initial thoughts in any case; thank you!
My basic view is that modern communication technology makes it pretty easy to communicate and exchange ideas with people, as long as you already have a relationship with those people. It’s less well suited for forming relationships because it’s not so good at helping you discover people outside what you think you’re interested in (because we tend to go to websites catering to our interests), and because it’s a bit harder to build deep trust without face to face meetings.
In-person events based around groups that have common interests but don’t already know each other can be really useful for forging deeper relationships, and the internet means those relationships can remain productive at a distance. They can also be useful for meeting new people, if these meetings are packed with people you don’t already know and the meetings force you to interact with new people (for example, by making you queue for a buffet, find a table with an opening, sit next to someone on a bus to a second location, circulate around and look at posters, etc.).
Maybe big conferences aren’t that good for this kind of thing, as Feynman and Eric speculate? At a big conference, you’re more likely to know more people and so you might end up just hanging out with them and not meeting new people. And perhaps, knowing you unlikely to run into any given person a second time, it just doesn’t feel as important to introduce yourself and get to know them? Or maybe it just takes two or three minor encounters to really build a relationship for many people.
For more on academic conferences, I wrote something here.
Thanks, Matt, for the thoughtful response. My key take-aways are that (1) in person events are helpful to get new relationships going because of trust & discovery, and (2) we should keep these meeting small (or create smaller sessions in larger meetings) and (3) purposefully get people together who otherwise might not talk, and ideally have them not just be passive but work on something together in those sessions. Some good initial thoughts in any case; thank you!