In his memoir The Gatekeeper, Terry Eagleton has a hilarious section where he sketches out portraits of members of the audience who ostensibly seek to contribute to the discussion at seminars and conferences. In the same spirit, with more than a little help from Erving Goffman, here are some of my observations on "The Presentation of Self at Seminars and Conferences"
1. Although many attend seminars to hear and, more importantly, to be heard, there will always be that person who under the guise of asking a question will preface his/her query (if it is ever articulated), by an extensive, well prepared and honed statement about their own research, publications - existing as well as forthcoming. In the company of a really relevant audience (consumers), the temptations of selling oneself and accumulating career capital are hard to resist. A minority of those who cannot help but operate in this mode actually manage to get to a genuine question at the end of their sales pitch.
2. Members of another tribe will begin to vigorously nod in agreement, ostensibly to signal their enthusiastic agreement with the speaker - even before the speaker has made any significant claims. Once in a while I have worried about the more enthusiastic nodders sustaining serious neck injury. Eventually, many of these congenital head shakers, particularly those who make it a point to sit quite close to the speaker, fall asleep. Not sure whether the rhythmic rocking of the head eventually induces sleep, or whether the manic rocking was actually meant to (unsuccessfully) resist a sleep attack. In either case, when they periodically force themselves to wake up, the action can sometimes be camouflaged - with a little tacit support from others who are in the know but do not want to disrupt the performance of the seminar - as a particularly vigorous expression of agreement with the speaker.
3. Then there are those who while not specifically in the business of self-advertizing, when given the chance to comment or ask a question, will ramble on forever. A colleague of mine who once chaired a seminar in which one such rambler really took up about ten minutes, concluded the session by thanking "both the speakers".
4. Then there those who come armed with their Mac Airs. They also shake and nod their heads vigorously as they type away energetically. Some of them are possibly taking notes. One suspects that a few might actually be helping themselves to the ideas presented at the seminars - in an era of "publish and perish", an efficient way to write a paper without too much effort. Some MacAir owners are also busy googling and fact checking. When they finally get a chance to ask a question, they can appear confident and eminently knowledgeable about facts acquired a few minutes earlier.
5. There are others who take special delight in pouncing on, attacking and ridiculing the speaker of the day. A heckler-lite as it were. On one memorable occasion, one such almost heckler lite got more than he expected when the speaker upped the ante in the ridicule register. "Look, I don't come to these seminar series to be insulted!" responded the academic heckler. To which the speaker coolly retorted "Well, why don't you go where you usually go for your weekly dose of insults?"
