In “The Scholarly Conference: Do We Want Democracy and Markets or Authority and Tradition?” (Rom Reference Rom2012), I make the case that the structures and incentives of the conventional scholarly conference (henceforth, APSA) do not create stimulating and engaging environments for teaching and learning. I claim that APSA, built around the “panel,” does not serve the best interests of either those giving or those attending presentations.

“The Scholarly Conference” is more analytical; this paper is more personal. I have always found APSA to be an alienating experience. When I was a graduate student and new professor, I thought that all I needed was to “get with the program.” Now, I believe that the alienation literally is the program and its emphasis on panels.

More often than I would like, the panels I have served on have been a loose conglomeration of papers of widely varying quality. My fellow presenters spend countless hours on their research but often only a small fraction of that in preparing their presentation. Presentations run long—it seems to me, the less developed the paper, the longer the presentation—therefore, the audience has little time to ask questions. In fact, few questions are asked: about 70% of APSA panelists receive one or no questions (Rom Reference Rom2012, 338). Discussants often give detailed criticisms that might be of great interest to the presenters but are of little value to the patient audience. As I summarized the panel experience: “The presenters walk in, present, and walk out; the audience sits down, listens, and leaves” (Rom Reference Rom2012, 339).

I enjoy giving presentations, but the effort entailed to prepare and give them produces little professional benefit other than, well, to give presentations at conferences. At no other time in my professional life do I give a short, live research presentation. I am pleased when I give a successful presentation, but I am not rewarded for doing so. I am embarrassed when my paper or presentation is subpar, but I face no penalties. Incentives are not everything, but they do matter.

Which panels do I attend? I am in a quandary because I often want to hear individual papers but they are on different panels scheduled at the same time. Like cable TV subscriptions, panels are bundled: I must “buy” papers I do not care for in order to hear those that I do. I am not alone in this dilemma; it appears that attendees typically want to hear a single paper rather than an entire panel. This arrangement harms both audience and presenters because the presenters miss the opportunity to meet with those who wanted to attend the presentation but opted instead for another panel.

The bundled aspect of the panels has another unfortunate consequence. Like many of my peers, I do not actually attend very many panels. Why not? The costs (i.e., time spent on desultory presentations of papers in which I am not interested) outweigh the benefits (i.e., engaging with scholars whose research is of special interest). As a result, attending panels is not a high priority for conference registrants: on average, they attend fewer than three panels (or less than 20% of the panel slots). Scholars have strong incentives to be on a panel (primarily to justify funding requests) so they can attend; however, once at the conference, they have insufficient incentive to attend very many. This creates an odd situation. Most of the conference program is devoted to panel presentations, whereas the majority of participants’ time is spent in avoiding them.

To improve conferences, I recommend that we change the way presentations are selected and how they are delivered, thereby creating the customized conference. To better serve both presenters and audience, I call for eliminating panels and replacing them with longer individual presentations of polished papers along with informal “learning” sessions with scholars engaged in one-on-one conversations. Registrants could decide whether they want to give a formal presentation or participate in learning sessions. The selection and scheduling of the formal presentations would be determined by votes of APSA members.

I am calling for a radical rethinking of the way that the research elements of APSA are constituted: in short, my proposal might be characterized (symposium contributor David Leal comes close) as “blowing up the conference in order to save it.” However, my focus on the structures and incentives of the research component is certainly not the only way to think about the conference; neither is it the best or only way to think about reinventing it. In this symposium, a diverse set of scholars from varied backgrounds and positions (but with a strong Texan accent) offers their own critiques and recommendations. I am delighted by their thoughtful responses to my recommendations and by their insightful suggestions concerning what is problematic about conferences and how they might be changed to benefit the profession.

The first contribution, “Creating a Scholarly Conference for the Contemporary Academy,” is by Michelle Deardorff (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga), who chaired the APSA Committee on Teaching and Learning. Deardorff argues that by focusing almost exclusively on the research panels, I make a “fallacious assumption…[based on] the shared disciplinary belief that all academics work at the same type of institution, one in which research is the primary or sole measurement of academic output.” Given this assumption, I ignored “the needs of professors from institutions focusing on academic outputs in addition to research.” She is right; it was a blindness in “The Scholarly Conference” and, in fact, in my subsequent contribution to this symposium. However, we might argue that it is a blindness shared by APSA and its focus on research panels. Deardorff argues that an increasing share of political science courses are taught by faculty in those institutions (i.e., community and liberal arts colleges) that understandably has a keen interest in—or at least the responsibility for—matters of teaching and administration. As a result, “rethinking the academic conference beyond the panel-selection processes is required for any new conference structure to be truly inclusive.”

The APSA Teaching and Learning Conference (TLC) responds to these teaching and administrative needs, but its audience is substantially different from those who attend APSA. (For what it is worth, I regularly attend the TLC and find its extended-workshop format highly engaging and warmly embracing.) APSA could be more inclusive if the TLC were incorporated into it as a “conference within a conference,” which might enrich both audiences. The TLC’s audience could benefit from exposure to valuable aspects of APSA (especially the additional networking opportunities, the excellent book room, and perhaps even attendance at research panels!) while maintaining its workshop format. Moreover, regular APSA participants would have the opportunity, by skipping the panels they already are skipping, to engage in the TLC workshops.

The inclusiveness of APSA—or the lack thereof—was the inspiration for the contribution of “Professional Conferences and the Challenges of Studying Black Politics” by Nikol Alexander-Floyed (Rutgers University) Byron D’Andra Orey (Jackson State University), and Khalilah Brown-Dean (Quinnipiac University). Rather than focusing on APSA, they present the National Conference of Black Political Science (NCOBPS) as an example of an alternative “group-specific” conference. They argue that “mainstream research often fails to provide the historical and cultural context necessary to properly analyze Black politics, [so that] those scholars who do grapple with these issues are forced to pursue alternative spaces for engaging their work.” Indeed, NCOBPS was “born out of the belief that Black scholars face unique challenges that require a dedicated space to engage with those who share both their lived experiences and scholarly commitments.” Since its inception in 1969, NCOBPS has been a venue in which scholars from “underrepresented groups and those whose research questions are often marginalized within the broader discipline” can receive “critical feedback on scholarly products, fruitful avenues for professional development, and the ability to network with scholars with similar research interests.”

This was news to me; to my regret, I had not heard of NCOBPS. Again, I wonder: as with the TLC, would it be possible to partner NCOBPS with APSA as another “conference within a conference”? As Alexander-Floyd, Orey, Alexander-Floyd, and Brown-Dean (as well as Deardorff) point out, in an age of tight budget constraints in which scholars may be able to finance only a single conference trip, many political scientists face a modest “Sophie’s Choice” (i.e., “Do I go to NCOPBS or APSA? TLC or APSA?”). The “dedicated space” of NCOBPS could be retained, with an “open space” created for participants in both conferences to learn from one another. Like some modern couples, NCOBPS and APSA could “live apart, together.” It has been more than 40 years since the NCOBPS broke away from APSA. Is it time to bring them back together?

In “Conquering the ‘Lumbering Dinosaur’: Graduate Student Experiences at Political Science Conferences,” Amanda Rutherford (Texas A&M University) makes the case for reforming APSA from the perspective of a PhD candidate. She accepts the assumption that APSA’s main purposes are for presenting research and networking, but she argues that “conference structures and behavioral norms often prohibit these goals from being realized for many students.” Nevertheless, like Leal, she is reluctant to call for sweeping changes, arguing that conference norms are “sticky” and that attendees are reluctant to experience change “even for the better.”

These are the norms that she—and, I suspect, many others—have experienced: deadlines do not matter, attending panels is a low priority, constructive criticism on presentations is unlikely, and networking is difficult. Rutherford is clearly a keen student of human behavior. She reports that she has been told to attend panels with people she should meet rather than papers she wants to hear and also that she is probably not going to receive much feedback on her work unless she is fortunate to be on a panel with a senior scholar who attracts a crowd.

Rutherford argues that we should shift APSA norms through institutional reform. The remedies that she suggests include a more detailed submission of paper proposals and a thorough review of them in the selection process, with actual enforcement of deadlines. APSA and its associated conferences have a credible commitment problem in this, but the problem could be fixed swiftly if “tough-luck” deadlines were imposed. Rutherford also recommends—we see the concept for the third time—the conference within a conference so that scholars with similar research interests have the opportunity to work more closely together over a more extended period.

In “Notes on the Romulan Reform of Conventions,” Ken Meier (Texas A&M University) concludes, “Let a thousand flowers bloom.” Yes, let them. Meier sows plenty of seeds, from the wild to the exotic. At the extreme? “Say No to the Conference” or make it entirely virtual. At the margins? Eliminate discussants, as the Public Management Research Conference has done without apparent notice, or—at the very least—have presenters buy drinks if the paper is submitted in a timely fashion or dinner if it is not. At the unconventional? Create a market for critiques and voting rights on presentations.

Meier’s most appealing “blossom”—that is, the one most in harmony with my paper—is “Doing Posters Right.” Poster sessions are more efficient than panels, Meier notes, because they directly connect scholars to scholars. Participants can go immediately to posters of interest and engage the creator, and presenters can discuss their work with their neighbors during down time. Wasted time can be minimized; conversations can be maximized.

Meier recognizes that “Doing Posters Right” requires that we convert “ragweed into roses.” To do so, we must eliminate the norm that posters are a consolation prize awarded to those whose papers otherwise would be rejected; as Meier notes, only their format differs, and it does so in a trivial way. Creating a critical mass of thoughtfully arranged posters and creating incentives to view them (more free drinks!) could create a dynamic opportunity for scholarly discussions.

Meier suggests yet more experimentation. Section heads could be encouraged to try novel ways to bring their sections together, perhaps by adopting the conference-within-a-conference format. Reward those section heads who innovate; schedule each paper at a specific time; ban PowerPoint. Simply experiment.

David Leal (University of Texas at Austin), in “Defending the Federation from the Rom-ulan Empire,” rejects the need for dramatic reforms: “If Conferences Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix Them.” His argument takes two main forms. On the one hand, he defends APSA as “reflecting the collective wisdom and experience of thousands of faculty and graduate students across a century of political science.” On the other, he claims that my recommendations are “largely impractical, too-clever-for-their-own-good, or exhibit flaws that seem predictable to this scholar of human behavior.”

Both claims have substantial merit. Whereas I assert that APSA is “hidebound,” Leal explains that, indeed, the conference has evolved over time to better meet the needs of participants. Citing my data, he maintains that most papers are well developed and that presenters have a strong incentive—their professional reputation—to give high-quality talks (although he admits that presenters often are “rushed, jet-lagged, and nervous”). There are benefits, Leal declares, to the serendipity of panels, and tailoring conferences to the specific needs of participants would mean losing those opportunities.

Leal raises strong objections to my proposal for the customized conference on grounds that I am comparing actual conferences to some Platonic ideal. He rejects my call for using democratic and market principles to organize conferences (wittily stating that “like the US Army, APSA might be better served to defend democracy than to practice it”). His primary criticism of my voting proposal is that using democracy to select “teaching” presentations will produce negative outcomes: low-turnout elections that favor established (or flashy) scholars over emerging topics and less prominent (or flamboyant) academics. He also believes that my proposed “learning” sessions would be even more stigmatized and less well attended than the poster sessions they resemble. Perhaps he is right.

However, Leal makes one major mistake, I believe: instead of comparing the actual to the ideal, he compares the most positive interpretation of the conventional conference (e.g., I might accidentally discover a paper that interests me by sitting through an entire panel!) with the worst inferences about the customized conference. Allow me to offer three examples. First, conference participants already “vote” on which presentations to attend by leafing through the lengthy conference program. My proposal simply calls for this voting to occur before the conference, which allows participants to select specific presentations that they want to hear rather than forcing them to sit through entire panels. In what way would the proposed voting system be worse than the current one?

Second, the current selection process already favors established professors and topics; it is unclear to me how voting would make these problems worse. (Note also that Rutherford states that graduate students already are encouraged to base attendance on the prominence of the scholars on the panels.) Third, most of the presentations at the customized conference would be learning sessions; by design, they would bring together scholars with common interests. Given that 70% of panelists are asked one or no questions, it is difficult to imagine that those presenting in a learning session would receive less feedback on their work than they currently receive from panel presentations.

Leal and I may attend the same conferences but we clearly experience them differently. He sees the cup as two-thirds full; I see it as two-thirds empty. In some ways, we both are probably correct. If participants were asked “Do you attend APSA primarily to go to panels?,” I am convinced that a substantial majority would answer “No.” However, if the question were “Are you in favor of eliminating panels at APSA in favor of individual presentations and posters?,” it is not unreasonable to believe that a majority again would respond “No.” The status quo might be acceptable given only the alternatives that thus far have been presented. Perhaps Churchill was right, after all, had he been speaking about conferences rather than democracy.

I remain unconvinced. The panel structure that dominates the conference is, everything considered, an enormous waste of time and energy given the resulting benefits. We can do better. The customized conference might not be the best answer and it certainly is not the only one. The ideas presented by each contributor to this symposium are worthy of serious consideration.

All of the symposium’s contributors undoubtedly agree that APSA can be valuable—invaluable, even—for political scientists. More-junior scholars can find it a place to learn the norms of the profession, to try out their research ideas, to learn about new theories and techniques, to develop their networks, and to seek jobs. Of course, more-senior scholars benefit as well. These elements of the conventional conference need not change. The friendships that begin, grow, and deepen over time are certainly one central benefit of the conference, whether conventional or customized. Indeed, I look forward to seeing the contributors to this symposium in San Francisco this coming Labor Day weekend.