I’ve been in San Antonio this week for academic conferences. This is my first time attending/presenting at ETS since 2015, and first time in person at SBL since 2018.

My approach to these conferences has shifted over the years. Early on as a grad student and young PhD, I felt the need to go to as many sessions as possible and pick up as much information as I could. Now, my focus is more on networking: trying to meet people whose work is important for mine, and connecting with them after the conference for future collaboration. I do go to some sessions, but often just to meet specific people afterward.

My approach to presenting papers has shifted, too. Young scholars often present too long and focus too much on method and background, to show that they’ve done their homework. This misses an opportunity, however, to test out key aspects of your hypothesis in a room full of smart people.

A few years ago, on a podcast, Mike Munger said this:

Douglass North was one of my dissertation advisors and Douglass North won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1993. And Doug was famous for going and giving a talk, and it would be twelve pages long and have four citations, two to Douglass North, one to Adam Smith and one to more a recent economics paper. And the people in the audience would say, “Doug, this is terrible. If you were going to do this, here’s what you have to do. You need to go read these five papers, all of them have written on your subject and they’re better than yours.” And he would write it down. He would write down their names he would make sure he got the citations. And next time he presented the paper, now it would have nine citations, before he started out with a five that had been suggested to him and he had added all of the suggestions and the paper actually wasn’t terrible now but still people would see it and say, “Oh no, no, no, here’s what you need to do.” So he would go around—and it was almost as if he was outsourcing the references because he didn’t read anything unless somebody said it was relevant—and he was outsourcing a lot of the ideas. And he would thank everyone, I’m not saying he was plagiarizing. He would gratefully acknowledge the suggestions of so and so in a footnote he might say this was suggested by so and so. But you write it, you go present it, you get comments, you think about it, you write it again, that is the way to be successful. 

WRITING AND THINKING LESS BADLY WITH MIKE MUNGER

This is the approach I took in my paper on Thursday. For this idea I’m working on, I had a messy paper of 12,000 words, which is far too long for a book chapter, let alone a conference paper. So I focused in on setting up the three puzzles I was trying to solve, and getting right to the juiciest, most controversial aspects as soon as possible. Then I had enough time to hear a room full of smart people tell me what made sense and what didn’t–thankfully, some good scholars were there and gave some thoughtful engagement.

Earlier in my career, my conference papers were too long, people got bored, and I didn’t get any feedback. Word to the wise: you will not read 160 WPM effectively. It will always take longer than you think it will.

It’s nearly always a good idea to shorten the paper and focus on the parts you need feedback on. Everyone who is listening to you knows that a conference paper is shorter than the article it will hopefully turn into, so you can sometimes skip the long buildup (especially methodology, unless that is the subject of your paper) and get right to the key insights/hypotheses. (I presented in a session with a graduate student on Thursday, and she did an excellent job of this, leaving plenty of time for discussion.)

Then you ask others what they think, and write down what they say (or record it on your phone). It’s important not to be defensive when they criticize your work, even if they do so in an uncharitable way. (This week, I saw a young scholar respond defensively to some mild criticism, and it was just awkward and embarrassing.) If you disagree or if you don’t have an answer, simply say, “I’ll have to think about that more–thank you.” Don’t waste your valuable time by trying to justify yourself in that moment. Try to briefly get references of books or articles the participants think you should read (even ask: “Could you please talk to me afterward so I can get that reference from you?”).

Receive all this feedback humbly, and consider it. Your moment of satisfaction will be when you see the revised, improved paper published–even though it might be a year or more later. “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” (Heb 12:11)