{"id":1200,"date":"2011-01-05T12:08:02","date_gmt":"2011-01-05T12:08:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edtechandtesol.info\/phd\/?p=1200"},"modified":"2011-01-05T12:08:02","modified_gmt":"2011-01-05T12:08:02","slug":"reasons-for-going-to-a-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/?p=1200","title":{"rendered":"Reasons for going to a conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reasons for going to a conference<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love going to conferences, but have recently noticed how the number of conference alerts, announcements and invitations I come across has grown and begun to overwhelm me. Too much choice is never a good thing (as Barry Schwartz argues in The Paradox of Choice<\/em>, 2004, New York: HarperCollins), so reducing it through eliminating irrelevant reasons should help to make the right one. Particularly, that attending a conference often requires a considerable investment of time and money.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0Unable to decide which of the two especially tempting conferences (one in June, the other one in July, both in the UK) I should attend I asked Julian and Richard for suggestions. They came up with simple but helpful remarks some of which were so good I thought I\u2019d share them here. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Julian\u2019s advice was not to stray too far out of the main path of research (I\u2019m prone to side trips) while bearing in mind that dabbling in a new theme might increase networking possibilities and bring additional benefits to one\u2019s own inquiry. \u201cFollow your instincts\u201d, he said.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0Richard came up with a few reasons why one would want to go to a specific conference.\u00a0<\/p>\n