Conference success equate with conversations

L

ively conversation among participants during breaks signals the success of an event, according to the Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Melbourne, David Karoly.

David Karoly - he equates seminar
success with conversations.

That view is echoed by conference and symposium organizers around the world with the consensus being that much of the “real work” is done via the networking that goes on over morning and afternoon tea breaks, lunch and dinner.

The cacophony of conversation during breaks at last week’s two-day “Paris and Beyond: Climate and Energy Pathways” symposium at the University of Melbourne’s Business School again indicated the importance of those brief breaks in formalities.

Some people intellectually grappled so intensely with ideas raised during the formal sessions that they had to be almost encouraged to join those enjoying the sumptuous food provided during the breaks.

All at the symposium had the underlying coming interest of climate change, but within that was an array of special fascinations that seemed to inexplicably and mysteriously draw people together.

Journalist and co-author of “Climate Code Red”, David Spratt, responded to a comment that climate change makes most everything redundant with a thought that he had heard for another, that universities as we know them, are now redundant.

He said it was argued that as they exist, our universities manufacture more graduates embedded with profit and growth syndrome that is quickly exhausting the world’s resources and in doing so has led it to the abyss; an abyss over which the world tumbles into catastrophic climate change.

Rather than produce even more fodder for the climate and growth machine, it was argued he said, that all the wonderful existing attributes of our universities should be re-tooled and used to ready graduates to create a new style of society detached and remote from what it is that has taken the world to the abyss.