I’d like to convey a few mostly unrelated generalities, and then turn to the subject of why we hold and attend professional conferences. First those generalities…
- Philly is a lot younger, hipper, cleaner, and more energized than it was let’s say a decade ago, when I last spent any substantial time here.
- If anyone should ever ask you to organize and run a substantial professional conference, the right answer is “no thank you”. All other answers are incorrect.
- It is gratifying to be in a city with good public transportation.
- Kids in their 20’s can drink a good deal of whiskey, get up into all kinds of mischief until the wee hours, and still show up for work at 7:30 looking refreshed and happy.
- No matter how carefully scripted and planned, large conferences generate heaping doses of entropy. One must adapt or be broken on the wheel.
- Preservationists are a wine crowd, archaeologists a beer crowd.
- “I’m so sorry, may I get you a cup of coffee?” can be a euphemism for “I wish you’d stop yelling at me, I don’t think you’re smart enough to find your own backside…with both hands…in the shower.”
These gatherings are useful because they allow you to talk with and listen to smart and exceptional people. That includes brilliant and famous practitioners at the very top of their game, and also those just starting out. I watched a young friend stand tall and do a brilliant and brave public presentation just a scant couple months after a heartbreaking death in her family. I was pressed into moderating a session for young scholars and professionals; a series of papers by students in their 20’s. They blew me away! It’s gratifying to know that old greybacks like me will be handing over the keys to people with so much talent, energy and smarts. I listened to an old friend weave a magical tale about a silver dollar her father carried through 60 years of war, work, and family to his deathbed. Her dad got the coin from his dad. She carries it now. It moved me literally to tears, and it illustrated with great clarity how a small object can connect us across time and miles to other lives and to the taproots of our own heritage.
These things will go home with me. They’ll inform my work and they’ll help me give my best to my job. I have the honor of helping my fellow citizens remember and care for their past. There are days when it’s just a job, but in fact what I do for a living is important and useful. It’s just that it’s easy to forget that without periodic reminders.
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