But the big thing is that it’s not like they haven’t had people telling them this stuff. I went to the meeting of the research committee last year to try and talk about the piece that I don’t see represented in your notes above, which is circulation. There are already lots of complaints about how there’s too much to keep track of, too many sessions at the conference, too many articles in the field, etc. It’s not that there isn’t enough; it’s that we don’t use the tools that already exist to manage it well. At. All.

But alot of these solutions sound to me like attempts by the presenters to reward (and/or rank) the work that they themselves perceive themselves as doing. And too many of the solutions that I’ve heard about from folk who are “taking the lead” on building a “research culture” are solutions that reward an old model of the individual researcher, reward certain kinds of research, substitute calls for action in place of actual action, and so forth.

I think you’re dead on in identifying some of the problems above. I think it’s notable that all of the speakers come from a much older generation of the field than you and I represent. And I think it’s no wonder that many of us, who could really enrich this conversation, seek our juice in other venues, finding little of it in rhetoric and composition.

Sigh. Sorry I wasn’t able to get to NO, and sorry I missed you…

cgb