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COMMENTARY

Guest Editorial: IAG Conferences

G. J. R. LINGE

The Forbes, Thrift and Williams (1983) commentary on the failings of the Institute of Australian Geographers noted that TAG Conferences rarely fulfil our expectations’. No doubt there are many reasons for this: here I can only summarise my own views. Even so, these encapsulate the kinds of comments that arise during conference pub-talk year after year. The purpose in airing them here more publicly will I hope be understood as a constructive attempt to encourage affirmative action towards more professionalism.

INCOHERENCE OF SESSIONS

Program secretaries and convenors have to act in the good faith that people giving invited or contributed papers will actually stick to the substance (if not the letter) of the subject of their papers. Even more ideally, they might expect authors during their oral presentation to try to relate their own contribution to the broad theme of the session and the other papers embraced within it.

However over the years there seems to have been a tendency for people to submit papers with ‘smart’ titles which give no real clue as to content but which enable them to talk about almost anything at the last minute. Consider the number of times you have heard speakers start off by saying either ‘I am not going to talk about that [the programmed topic] at all . . .’ or ‘The organisers seem to have put my paper in the wrong session . . .’. The result is that the convenors sigh helplessly as their attempts at cohesiveness come unstuck yet somehow they and the organisers end up shouldering the ‘blame’.

INCOHERENCE OF PAPERS

That problem is exacerbated by the generally poor standard of paper presentation (the quality of the scholarship is another matter!). First, there are sometimes no, or insufficient, copies of the paper available for the audience because, run the excuses, the typist, the printer, the postman or whoever forgot or lost the manuscript, or went home sick or on holiday or on strike. Or it was impossible to have copies made because the university/college/department was closed (as though vacations flashed on and off like Christmas tree lights). The real reason, one suspects in some cases, is that the distribution of copies would enable people to see through the transparently thin paper.

Second, over the years I have become increasingly dismayed at the poor platform performances of the so-called ‘established’ academics who seem content to put on light-weight fireside chats punctuated by upside-down slides and illegible tables and diagrams (‘I doubt

Department of Human Geography, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra, A.C.T. 2601. Australian Geographical Studies 23, April 1985.

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whether many of you will be able to read this but it doesn’t really matter’). To be fair there are afew people who do have the gift of the gab and can put across their ideas in an entertaining and yet informal way. One shudders to imagine what students think about some of these dismal performances: maybe this helps to explain the ‘minimal number of post-graduate students who have been encouraged to join’ the Institute of Australian Geographers (Kissling, 1984, 304). They must wonder how their ‘superiors’ and supervisors get away with the kind of sloppy performances for which they themselves would be-and are-chided. In short, it is sheer nerve for senior people in the discipline to treat Institute of Australian Geographer’s audiences to what, in effect, is an impertinence.

Third, even the most gifted academics seem to have little idea of how to make an oral presentation that summarises and highlights their more detailed and technical version. Over and over again the audience has to contend with speakers who, in their enthusiasm, get stuck into the first few pages of their paper and then-if the chairman is alert and gives a reminder that time is nearly up- try to gabble an incoherent summary of the last three-quarters of their exposition. Towards the end of their breathless blabber they usually manage to leave the audience feeling deprived: ‘if the chairman had given me more time [that is. had he been less fair to the other speakers] I would have got to the point’. Is it really asking too much for people to ‘practise’ beforehand with a watch?

INCOHERENCE OF CHAIRPERSONS

Often it seems that the people invited to chair sessions are selected more for their status than for their expertise in the subject concerned (unless in the dim and distant past) or their ability to control events. It is commonplace for sessions to start late (not wholly the chairperson’s fault) and for the first speaker to be allowed to drone on long past his or her allotted time. Then there is a ‘courtesy’ question and answer session so that time available to the other three or four speakers shrivels away. The session runs out of time and has to be terminated which gives the chairperson a good excuse for not having to try to draw out the main threads or in fact having to do anything except warmly thanking the speakers for their ‘very interesting and well presented’ papers. Again, to be fair, there are people who chair sessions extremely well; at the other extreme there are those who figuratively - and on occasion not so figuratively- fall asleep on the job.

The consequences of sloppy chairmanship spread further. The need at most Institute of Australian Geographers meetings to hold concurrent sessions means that some people want to hear papers in more than one session. Yet each session ends up with its own ad hoc timetable. The chances are that you may find yourself listening to the remnants of paper one in the first lecture theatre, the beginning of the third paper in the second lecture theatre, and an empty third lecture theatre (because a couple of speakers did not show up and everyone has gone to tea).

INCOHERENCE OF INSTITUTE MEETINGS

Part of the problem of the Institute of Australian Geographers seems to be that it tries to be all things to all people. While some attempts have been made to promote particular themes, the diverse nature of the dishes offered masks the flavour of the year.

To help restore this focus, or perhaps two or three foci, there is a need for someone- presumably the President-to present an address at the beginning of each Institute meeting which sets the scene, establishes the objectives and poses questions that might tie the sessions together. This would be much more useful than a Presidential address later in the week which

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dwells at length on the minutiae of his own narrow field of research interest. (The ‘his’ is deliberate: IAG has not yet seen fit to appoint a distaff President.) At well-run international conferences the President or Chairman is expected not only to give leadership at the start of the meeting but also to make an ‘erudite’ summary of what the meeting has achieved and what are important issues to be taken up at subsequent ones. In contrast, by the middle of the last day of an Institute of Australian Geographer’s conference most people have either cleared off home or are well established in the local watering hole.

There are so many issues of importance to geographers that it should not be beyond the wit of the Institute of Australian Geographers Council to establish targets for two or three meetings ahead and perhaps even a conference sub-committee with powers to try to overcome some of the problems raised above. As things stand at the moment, no conference attempts to build on the last or provides an agenda for the next.

When (privately) I criticised one member of the professoriate for giving such a lousy paper at an Institute of Australian Geographer’s meeting a year or two ago, his response was ‘what do you expect, it was only an IAG conference’. It seems that no matter how hard the Council strives to arrange for better meetings, the quality will only improve if participants behave more professionally. In short, Institute Conferences may better fulfil expectations if ‘established’ academics recognise the need to spend less time pronouncing precept and more on polishing practice.

REFERENCES

Forbes, D.K., Thrift, N.J. and Williams, P.. 1983: The Institute of Australian Geographers; blueprint

Kissling, C.C., 1984: Membership blues, Australian Geographical Studies, 22, 304-5. for the 1980s. Australian Geographical Studies, 21. 3-7.

TWENTY=FIRST INSTITUTE OF AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHERS’

CONFERENCE PERTH

12-16 MAY 1986 Copies of the advance circular are available from Associate Professor Arthur Conacher, Department of Geography, Univeristy of Western Australia, Nedlands, W .A. 6009.