The Conference and the Para-Conference

Unless you’re talking about chaired professors at prestigious universities, teachers, including professors, don’t make much money. With two daughters headed for college, I went over to what faculty consider the Dark Side to become a dean and, eventually, an academic vice-president. College administrators as a rule do better than their teaching colleagues. Moreover, the former generally have funds to attend relevant workshops and conferences, often in appealing places. So, from my administrator days I learned that when you go to such meetings, they are really in two parts—the conference and the para-conference. The conference is what’s on the program. But the para-conference, which happens on the periphery, is generally the more exciting and even more educational part...

I re-experienced both sides of this equation recently. Boulder, Colorado, the small city where I live, hosts the state’s flagship institution: The University of Colorado at Boulder. For the last 75-plus years, C.U. as it’s known has offered a wonderful gift to the community, one which attracts visitors from the U.S. and abroad: The annual Conference on World Affairs, or C.W.A. When I arrived in Boulder 15 years ago, the Conference took up a whole April week. Since Covid, however, it’s been shortened to three days. This year’s edition included dozens of experts from commerce, government, and the arts as well as academia in several dozen panel sessions guided by the themes of leadership, global equity, and the next 100 years. Still recovering from my total-knee replacement, I managed to attend only five. They included “Apocalypse Now: The Real Big Threats to Humanity”; “The Power of Story”; and “Global Conflict 101: The Cycle Continues.” All were riveting. The last one was especially noteworthy, since it took place as an assembly at Boulder High School, where the students were fully engaged.
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Here too I experienced a para-conference. On my first day I took a lunch break in the local cafeteria. Sitting alone, I was soon joined by a lovely young woman from Colorado Springs. A senior business major, she told me that, thanks to an internship, she was now working virtually part-time with a promise of full-time employment on graduation in two months. Soon our conversation went deeper. Raised Roman Catholic by devout parents, she said that while she believed in God and Jesus, there were aspects of the Church she just could not accept. I suggested that, in my experience, we should each follow our personal Yellow Brick Road. The next day I was at the end of the Starbuck’s line in another part of the cafeteria. When I let out a sigh, an another female undergraduate, just ahead of me, turned and sighed herself. Then we started talking. This young woman, a sophomore, was a landscape-architecture major. Again, the conversation went into personal areas. She introduced me to her boyfriend, a bright-eyed classics major. We stood and talked for 20 minutes. How bright, articulate, and relational all three undergrads were! Finally, on the last day, I asked a panelist I admired to coffee. She, a young scientist, went me one better by getting us both box lunches prepared for presenters. She told me about her work and young family. I responded to her questions about my wisdom work. Although I had missed many worthwhile sessions, I felt fully satisfied with “my” conference. As in the past, the para-conference was the icing on the cake.

Photo of a busy university cafeteria. Credit: Simon Karemann on Unsplash