My second day at Worldcon started with a panel titled “Scientists Without Borders”, with three other female scientists: Sharon Reamer, Katie Mack and Rachel Berkson, along with our friendly moderator, Brother Guy “I can hear your confession, but I can’t forgive you” Consolmagno. All of us have worked extensively and/or presently work in a country that was not the one we were born in, which is less uncommon for scientists than you might imagine.
This was such an enjoyable panel. Guy outlined a quick plan in the Green Room (already this was looking much better than my first panel). He asked us to use personal stories to illustrate points as much as possible, which is a strategy that worked beautifully. This was a panel in which many examples of cultural misunderstanding, miscommunication, sexism and racism were brought up, but all were handled with sensitivity and even with humour.
I didn’t have a chance to make notes. I really wish I had, as I’ve already forgotten a good deal and I would have dearly loved to remember everything about this panel. I enjoyed Sharon’s anecdotes about being an early-career geophysicist in Germany at a time when there were almost no women in the field, trying to give instructions to men who ranked beneath her. They unwillingly respected the hierarchy at first, but eventually she won them over, partly through competence, but also through putting in a massive effort in learning German. I enjoyed Rachel’s observations on adapting to different cultural attitudes toward the expression of respect and the sharing of ideas. I enjoyed Katie’s stories about working in Japan, and her perceived value as a young non-Japanese-speaking undergraduate researcher (hint: not even valuable enough for teleconferences to be conducted in a language she could understand).
Guy provided just enough guidance to keep the panel moving along a particular trajectory, ending with literary examples that we thought did a good job of portraying scientists. (Hint: not very many.) I do hope we influenced some aspiring writers in the audience to put scientist characters in their novels who are well traveled, not single-minded, not necessarily white, who have diverse relationship histories, and who may be parents too. I am reminded now in particular of Rachel’s anecdote about the Swedish professor who was spoken of by Swedes in reverent tones because they’d managed to achieve so much and had a large family. Said professor was male - parental (not maternal/paternal) leave in Sweden is two years (!!!).
I do hope someone, whether another panelist or an audience member, writes up the panel in more detail, as I’m seriously regretting not trotting off to a quiet corner afterward to make some notes. To be fair to myself, I didn’t have much time since I picked up Humuhumu from the bloke shortly afterward and had solo childcare for the rest of the day and evening.
We spent Saturday entirely away from the con. In the morning, Humuhumu and I went to hunt book benches (see previous post), and I discovered just how horribly inaccessible much of the south bank of the Thames is when you actually need to use lifts because you aren’t supposed to be carrying a pushchair up and down stairs. I ended up having to do it once, which exacerbated my existing injury and unfortunately flattened me for what I had hoped would be an evening out for me.
Sunday heralded my third panel, “Secrecy in Science”. There were quite a large number of people on this panel. Three of us were from astro/space including the moderator, one person was from pharma, one European patent lawyer (largely dealing with pharma, I suspect, from their contributions) and one English professor.
Despite the advance discussion in the Green Room, which gave us a good structure to work with, I never felt like this panel quite gelled completely. I’m not really sure why. There was a lot of interesting independent discussion about secrecy in the two realms of drug discovery and space exploration, but we never quite managed to make an unforced connection between them. I didn’t find much of it exceptionally memorable, I must admit, so I didn’t come away regretting the lack of opportunity to make notes as strongly as I had with the Friday panel.
One tense moment occurred during the open access discussion. An audience member asked what the panel members thought of Aaron Swartz (a researcher and activist who downloaded and shared a number of academic articles from JSTOR, a paywall-protected site). Swartz committed suicide last year after being prosecuted by MIT and JSTOR for his actions. Those panel members who were aware of the case (I wasn’t among them) and the audience seemed to agree that the outcome was disproportionate to the alleged crime. Swartz had legitimate access to JSTOR when he downloaded the articles, and a good many of the articles that he shared were apparently not paywalled by their originating journals. However, the discussion got heated when audience members pushed for further personal statements from the panel members, and one panel member took issue with the agreement over disproportionality between Swartz’s actions and the prosecution’s. The tension was diffused by means of a swift topic change.
My final LonCon3 event was my Rosetta talk, “Catching a Comet”.
I had an amusing encounter before I started. I was poking the projector when a person in the audience spoke to me. “Are you the person in charge of the lights and things?”
“No,” I replied, “I’m the speaker.”
The expression on this person’s face was priceless. (You get one guess re: age/race/gender.)
I had thought this talk through but had little time to work on it before the con, so putting it together was a concentrated last-minute effort. It seemed to go over well. At the very least, I didn’t hear any snoring, not very many people left during it and I got a few laughs. I tried to add in little anecdotes and tidbits from work, and I spent at least fifteen minutes answering questions at the end.
Afterward, I talked to a few audience members, and went for a quick coffee with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
foxfinial and briefly met some other lovely writers before heading out to meet the bloke and Humuhumu for our journey home. It was earlier than I’d hoped, since I had to be in hospital in Birmingham for my 20-week scan on Tuesday morning, so I missed the last two panels I was supposed to be on.
Note: Part 1 is access-locked due to racefail during my first panel. I may unlock it at some point in future, but given previous experience and observation wherein calling out racism often brings more wrath down upon the whistleblower than it does on the person being racist, it’s unlikely.
This was such an enjoyable panel. Guy outlined a quick plan in the Green Room (already this was looking much better than my first panel). He asked us to use personal stories to illustrate points as much as possible, which is a strategy that worked beautifully. This was a panel in which many examples of cultural misunderstanding, miscommunication, sexism and racism were brought up, but all were handled with sensitivity and even with humour.
I didn’t have a chance to make notes. I really wish I had, as I’ve already forgotten a good deal and I would have dearly loved to remember everything about this panel. I enjoyed Sharon’s anecdotes about being an early-career geophysicist in Germany at a time when there were almost no women in the field, trying to give instructions to men who ranked beneath her. They unwillingly respected the hierarchy at first, but eventually she won them over, partly through competence, but also through putting in a massive effort in learning German. I enjoyed Rachel’s observations on adapting to different cultural attitudes toward the expression of respect and the sharing of ideas. I enjoyed Katie’s stories about working in Japan, and her perceived value as a young non-Japanese-speaking undergraduate researcher (hint: not even valuable enough for teleconferences to be conducted in a language she could understand).
Guy provided just enough guidance to keep the panel moving along a particular trajectory, ending with literary examples that we thought did a good job of portraying scientists. (Hint: not very many.) I do hope we influenced some aspiring writers in the audience to put scientist characters in their novels who are well traveled, not single-minded, not necessarily white, who have diverse relationship histories, and who may be parents too. I am reminded now in particular of Rachel’s anecdote about the Swedish professor who was spoken of by Swedes in reverent tones because they’d managed to achieve so much and had a large family. Said professor was male - parental (not maternal/paternal) leave in Sweden is two years (!!!).
I do hope someone, whether another panelist or an audience member, writes up the panel in more detail, as I’m seriously regretting not trotting off to a quiet corner afterward to make some notes. To be fair to myself, I didn’t have much time since I picked up Humuhumu from the bloke shortly afterward and had solo childcare for the rest of the day and evening.
We spent Saturday entirely away from the con. In the morning, Humuhumu and I went to hunt book benches (see previous post), and I discovered just how horribly inaccessible much of the south bank of the Thames is when you actually need to use lifts because you aren’t supposed to be carrying a pushchair up and down stairs. I ended up having to do it once, which exacerbated my existing injury and unfortunately flattened me for what I had hoped would be an evening out for me.
Sunday heralded my third panel, “Secrecy in Science”. There were quite a large number of people on this panel. Three of us were from astro/space including the moderator, one person was from pharma, one European patent lawyer (largely dealing with pharma, I suspect, from their contributions) and one English professor.
Despite the advance discussion in the Green Room, which gave us a good structure to work with, I never felt like this panel quite gelled completely. I’m not really sure why. There was a lot of interesting independent discussion about secrecy in the two realms of drug discovery and space exploration, but we never quite managed to make an unforced connection between them. I didn’t find much of it exceptionally memorable, I must admit, so I didn’t come away regretting the lack of opportunity to make notes as strongly as I had with the Friday panel.
One tense moment occurred during the open access discussion. An audience member asked what the panel members thought of Aaron Swartz (a researcher and activist who downloaded and shared a number of academic articles from JSTOR, a paywall-protected site). Swartz committed suicide last year after being prosecuted by MIT and JSTOR for his actions. Those panel members who were aware of the case (I wasn’t among them) and the audience seemed to agree that the outcome was disproportionate to the alleged crime. Swartz had legitimate access to JSTOR when he downloaded the articles, and a good many of the articles that he shared were apparently not paywalled by their originating journals. However, the discussion got heated when audience members pushed for further personal statements from the panel members, and one panel member took issue with the agreement over disproportionality between Swartz’s actions and the prosecution’s. The tension was diffused by means of a swift topic change.
My final LonCon3 event was my Rosetta talk, “Catching a Comet”.
I had an amusing encounter before I started. I was poking the projector when a person in the audience spoke to me. “Are you the person in charge of the lights and things?”
“No,” I replied, “I’m the speaker.”
The expression on this person’s face was priceless. (You get one guess re: age/race/gender.)
I had thought this talk through but had little time to work on it before the con, so putting it together was a concentrated last-minute effort. It seemed to go over well. At the very least, I didn’t hear any snoring, not very many people left during it and I got a few laughs. I tried to add in little anecdotes and tidbits from work, and I spent at least fifteen minutes answering questions at the end.
Afterward, I talked to a few audience members, and went for a quick coffee with
foxfinial and briefly met some other lovely writers before heading out to meet the bloke and Humuhumu for our journey home. It was earlier than I’d hoped, since I had to be in hospital in Birmingham for my 20-week scan on Tuesday morning, so I missed the last two panels I was supposed to be on. Note: Part 1 is access-locked due to racefail during my first panel. I may unlock it at some point in future, but given previous experience and observation wherein calling out racism often brings more wrath down upon the whistleblower than it does on the person being racist, it’s unlikely.
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Also I love the book bench pictures!
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I'm anxious to get back down to London with the toddler to hunt the rest of the book benches. They're only in place until 15 September so there isn't much time left and we are very busy when we go back to work next week.
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I think the panel make the right decision in your case; it was clear to me that the questioner was trying to push the panel members - Heather Urbanski in particular - into denouncing the whole academic journal system, and was one step away from accusing anyone who disagreed of being morally bankrupt. It's a variation on the argument-phrased-as-a-question I've seen put to pro authors effectively accusing them of being greedy for not giving away their work for free, which doesn't tend to go down well either.
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ETA - for the benefit of those who weren't there, interestingly, the Politically Loaded Question in my case was also tacked onto an issue relating to copyright, though from what sounds to have been a diametrically opposed position to the JSTOR/Schwartz side, with the questioner in fact suggesting that copyright law should have been invoked to prevent Anita Sarkessian from running her Tropes in Games kickstarter.
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(Male 30ish German fan, asked a question about alleged passing off by the owner of a grocery stand, which had nothing to do with fanfic, and then blatantly used it to segue clumsily into MRA-style griping about Anita Sarkessian.)
I nearly said something, but (a) that would have been pre-empting the moderator, and (b) I perceived an instant wave of W-T-F from the rest of the audience that made it clear that if this bloke continued it was going to go badly for him. (As in, challenging him would have got the support of the whole room.) I think he perceived that too and appeared to shut up.
As to how to deal with this: once he'd asked a fairly irrelevant question, the moderator should have cut him off politely but firmly before he could follow up and taken another question instead. People like that tend to operate a bait-and-switch technique with the panel, asking an opening question that is either semi-relevant at best or is a platitude that the panel is bound to agree with, before launching their real point. If you spot this, then just don't give them a chance to follow up.
This leads into my suggested response to other warning-sign openers:
"I have two questions" - response is "Well, we'll take one now and the other if we have time later"
"This is not so much a question..." - needs interrupting with "Thank you, but we have a lot of questions that are questions, so we'll take those first."
(I actually saw a combination of these, when an audience member stood up with a piece of paper and said "I have five points I'd like to make..." The otherwise competent moderator failed to shut him down, leading to five minutes of once person hogging the panel.)
Actual inappropriate or offensive questions should, I suggest, be challenged politely but firmly. For German Chap I'd have been inclined to cut in and say "Excuse me, that's not a question, that's a comment that comes over as prejudiced against women, and it's not appropriate, so we'll move on." Then pick another questioner. If he'd tried to interrupt to further press his point, ask them not, please, to interrupt other people asking questions.
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OMG YES PLEASE. This should be part of the moderator training. Or information pack, if training is too much of a headache to organise.
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That panel in particular seemed to spark a lot of opinionated comment rather than questions.
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My thoughts on moderating are as follows:
Contact the other panel members in advance, introduce yourself, and suggest everyone does likewise.
Suggest some general ideas for the panel discussion, and ask for suggestions and comments.
...but resist the temptation to get into such detailed discussion you have the panel in advance.
Prepare a checklist of talking points in advance.
Go to Green Room ready to say hi to the other panel members and to answer questions like "Um, I've totally forgotten what we were going to talk about."
If you can, try to agree an opening point for discussion. It helps get things going and avoids the startled rabbit look when you pounce on one of the other panel members for comment.
At the room, check if mikes work, if you're audible, and if anyone with sight/hearing/mobility issues needs to be able to move to more appropriate seating. Say 'Welcome to [panel topic]" and be prepared for someone to go "Oh..." and leave in a hurry.
Get everyone to introduce themselves.
Let the audience know what you're planning to do re questions - save them for the final 20 minutes, or take them throughout.
Get the ball rolling with your opening topic, and try to get all the panel members to have a chance. Try not to move on until everyone has had some input.
How much should moderators talk? I think that depends on the panel. On some, I've really been the facilitator, and have said very little. If your panel is chatty, you may well be able to literally sit back and let them get on with it, just nudging things forward to new topics now and again. However, if you're on the panel because you're someone with plenty to say, then it's reasonable to take part, as long as you don't hog it.
Also, do keep a tally of who is saying what. If one of your panel members is not saying much, throw some points his or her way. If one of them tends to talk over others, interrupt (you are moderator!) and either take over or punt the conversation to another panel member.
Nobody wants (at least, I hope nobody does) to be the moderator who says something crass or patronising, but if it's all dried up and your mind has gone blank it's easy to panic and say something like "Uh... what's the minority view on this, Person I Am Now Treating As Token Person Of Colour". Try to think of things not to say in view of the panel composition, or the subject matter, or the bucket-of-napalm topic of the week.
If you've said you'll go to questions later, remember to do so. For a 50-minute panel I'd say go to questions between 30 and 40 minutes in. Earlier if the panel is hard work to keep going, or the audience is bursting with questions. Later if the panel is going really, really well - but still remember to allow time for the audience.
I'm sure other people have more suggestions, but that's a start.
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I hope to attend one of the smaller cons (Nine Worlds especially) next year. Will be an extra challenge with two little ones!
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I'm glad you had the good fortune to need to be elsewhere on that Thursday evening. I'm almost entirely certain you had more fun.
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Sounds like the rest of it was a much better experience.
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Yes, the con definitely improved as it went along!
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Ah, but it was worth it for the applause... =:o}
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