[Air-l] Conference absenteeism?

[Ulla Bunz]

I would concur with Mark Johns that AoIR does fairly well with regard to
show/no show panelists. I have chaired panels at the larger
Communication conferences and also at AoIR, and my policy is to start
right on time with the first listed presenter who is actually present.
If the other person shows up along the way, then they will have to go
last and deal with it if there is not enough time or less time for their
presentation. Then of course, it's also my policy to a) indicate time
throughout presentations, and b) stand up and eventually interrupt a
speaker if they go over their allotted limit. I've been told that's
rude, but I think it's even ruder to have one person present for such a
long time that another has only a couple of minutes left. Already at
AoIR we allot 15-20 minutes per paper. At the big Communication
conferences you often have only about 10 minutes.
Hopefully people who are interested in each others' presentations find
time to continue the conversation during breaks or over lunch.
Ulla

----------------------------------------------------
Ulla Bunz
Assistant Professor
Department of Communication
Rutgers University
4 Huntington Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Email: bunz at scils.rutgers.edu
----------------------------------------------------

-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-aoir.org-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-aoir.org-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Mark D.
Johns
Sent: Sunday, September 26, 2004 11:27 AM
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-l] Conference absenteeism?

At 09:37 PM 9/25/2004, you wrote:
>I would be interested in knowing people's experiences at other
conferences.

My highly subjective and non-scientific reaction is that we do far
better 
at AoIR than some of the big conferences, such as the National 
Communication Association. Yes, we had some people who had to cancel 
because they were being chased by hurricanes and what not, but generally

people were there, and even more, there were people present to hear the 
presentations. I can't count how many times I've been in NCA sessions
where 
the panelists -- sometimes only two of the four scheduled -- merely 
presented to one another. Cassandra, I think what you experienced was 
something of a fluke for AoIR.

------
Mark D. Johns, Ph.D.
Asst. Professor of Communication/Linguistics,
Luther College, Decorah, Iowa
http://faculty.luther.edu/~johnsmar/
-----------------------------------------------
"Get the facts first. You can distort them later."
     ---Mark Twain  

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