[Air-l] Re: making papers available

[Jonathan Sterne]

Hi All,

I also agree with Barry.  Volunteers are just that, not employees.  Making papers available to
everyone is more work, and strident demands for other people's volunteer time just aren't cool.

There's are two other angles that nobody's mentioned.
1.    Sometimes there's no paper.  I often present segments of work in progress at conferences; my
essays tend to be on the long side, and there's no way I can fit 40 manuscript pages in to a 15
minute (sometimes less!) presentation.  So, rather than rewriting the whole thing, I write a speech
and give it as a speech.  People understand spoken language better than written language in
conference formats anyway.

The result is that any time I've been asked for a conference paper in recent memory, I've only got
lecture notes to give.  Usually, I take a name, and months later when the journal or book-chapter
version is ready to go, I send copies to whoever asked me.

2.    Finally, this is just too obvious but I can't help myself from pointing it out: if you want a
particular paper from a particular author, why not drop them a line?  Most academics are thrilled
when others want to read their work.

Best,
--Jonathan