Large vs small events…

I immediately admit that I have a preference for small scale events.

Among the contributions I wrote that had the largest impact (which, admittedly, is rather insignificant in the order of things) most of them were discussed in small workshops, maybe before approaching more thorough venues for publication, and the process generally brought significant added value to the initial ideas.

First of all, having to present an idea with a relatively relaxed context (I mean even a bit more time, or less draconic timetables, and however greater focus on the possibility to discuss) means more attention to giving it proper form, even relating it better to other things being discussed just before the presentation (I really appreciate people integrating on the fly their presentations to add some reference to something that was presented even few minutes before getting on the stage) or that plausibly will be discussed later on, and not just describing what was done per se, and maybe with a defensive attitude. In smaller scale events, general I look for criticisms, not just comments but practical suggestions on how to do something better, I don’t try to prevent them.

The smaller scale generally implies that participants were more focused on the discussed topics, so on average it means I was getting more attention. More generally, people attend smaller scale events with a different attitude, pursuing interaction with other speakers, the organizers, the audience: in smaller scale events there is often the mostly shared idea that people are participating some form of collective construction of meaning, or at least they are really interested in knowing each other.

Finally, due to the limited size there is the possibility to have a “big fish in small pond” effect, or even “big in Japan” effect (I apologize to my Japanese friends, as The Guardian says it speaks more to a British sense of superiority than about Japan anymore… but it also reminds me of a song from the eighties).

Of course, it’s not a rule: the organization of satellite workshops sometimes is encouraged by large scale events, and it is not always the case that organizers have a genuine long lasting interest in some topic (or maybe they do, but things can change pretty quickly). Moreover, participants can be really too few to have a minimally interesting situation, and sometimes, for a number of reasons, they might not be really willing to actively participate: again, there might be a number of excuses for such a behavior, but I am really upset when I see someone within a small scale event (particularly workshops) presenting her work and leaving almost immediately after.

Larger scale events, and I’m thinking about computer science/engineering related conferences, are generally venues in which someone has a particular interest in presenting a contribution, also due to the value of the publication perceived or attributed (sometimes formally, such as in rankings like the one proposed by CORE). Of course, there is also an interest in meeting other attendants, but that mostly happens around sessions, in corridors, coffee-breaks, social dinners. Schedules are generally tight, with limited time for discussion. The sheer number of attendees generally discourages substantial interaction in sessions. One of the saddest things, from my perspective, is the average poster session at a computer science/engineering conference: packed in relatively small space, metaphorically packed in a short time frame in an already busy schedule, often corresponding to a coffee-break. Participants having a coffee and eating croissant or some biscuits, killing time and giving the impression of paying attention to presenters for maybe five minutes. Of course there are individual exceptions, meaning conference formats and researchers taking a different perspective and behavior. But I suspect most people had experienced both sides of this cliché.

I have also participated a very large event, outside computer science/engineering, that somehow escapes the above description: the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (it will reach the 103rd edition in 2024) is the “one stop conference” on transportation topics, and it is always held in Washington, D.C., in early January. The last time I participated (I think it was 2013) it had over 12 thousand attendees, and it comprised sessions on topics ranging form “Pedestrians, Bicycles, Human Factors” to “Pavements”. It is both a scientific conference and a fair, with an impressive participation by practitioners (especially transportation company operators), with sponsors exhibiting products and services, and great receptions held by companies and even important departments of large universities (so, not a single and impossible social dinner, but rather a number of informal networking and refreshments situations). On top of this, the poster session is often preferred by authors to podium presentations, due the fact that there’s a common practice of really taking the time to participate these moments. Each presenter has a lot of space, a power plug (so it is basically both a poster and a demo session, in a way), and each session lasts almost two hours. In my poster session I was able to really discuss my research with at least six researchers, one from France that I knew by name but that I never met in person before. In general, I never had the feeling of having a second-rate occasion of discussing my work.

So, as for most things, reality is complex, and size does not tell it all. Organizing events is not a simple enterprize, but it is important to try to take a walk in the shoes of a participant, also those that don’t have a long lasting relationship with the event, and to try to think out of the box, since we probably all have examples of ways that a traditional conference organization has let us down as participants.