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posted by [personal profile] owlfish at 11:44pm on 11/07/2006
It's always decadent to attend a conference without doing anything for it. I'm not presenting, organizing, moderating, or volunteering. I'm here to help swell the audience, to listen to interesting papers, to see old friends, and meet new people. And so I have.

Most exciting meeting: I've finally met the historian of astrology who's a friend of my grandmother's!

Just-in-time knowledge: During coffee break, a new friend gushed about an archaeology paper she'd heard first thing this morning. She even pointed out who the speaker was from across the room. There are about a thousand people at Leeds. Guess which one sat down across from me at lunchtime, only two hours later?

Hardest-to-follow Logistics:
There are three people scheduled to be in a session, 1, 2, 3, plus M, the moderator.
Person 1 has to cancel.
Person 4 is found to take Person 1's place.
Person 4 has to cancel at the last minute, but has already written the paper.
Person 4 asks Person 2 to give her paper.
This puts Person 2 in the awkward position of giving two papers.
Person 2 recruit M to read Person 2's paper.
So... Person 3 gives his own paper; M reads Person 2's paper; Person 2 reads Person 4's paper.

Series launch: Brepols is starting a new series of books on the theme of "Medieval Voyaging", meant in the broadest possible way - metaphorical journeys, journey of the mind, journeys made by information or objects, or, indeed, journeys in the more literal sense. In a paper made in a session sponsored in honor of the series' beginning, I finally saw an image of a Nilometer. I've been wondering just quite how they were done for ages, since they show up in histories of invention. Brepols is soliciting, if you've a relevant manuscript or might consider writing one.
There are 4 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 
posted by [identity profile] celandineb.livejournal.com at 10:58pm on 11/07/2006
*blinks* Why didn't M just read Person 4's paper?
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posted by [personal profile] owlfish at 01:15pm on 13/07/2006
I left out a small but useful piece of information: person 4's paper was in French, while person 2 had written his paper in English, so it was easier to find a replacement reader for it. Not that my French is good enough to understand an academic paper read in French with a strong Spanish accent... but that was my problem. Most other people seemed to do just fine.
 
posted by [identity profile] celandineb.livejournal.com at 01:20pm on 13/07/2006
Ah, okay, that makes sense then. *g*
 
posted by [identity profile] gleodream.livejournal.com at 11:20pm on 11/07/2006
Wow, sounds like quite a spectacle!

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