International Conferences: a money making biz or service or fame or festival / professional gathering?

At a time when I was an undergraduate student at Roorkee University (currently: IIT/Roorkee), I used to see international people gathered inside the audiotorium and used to gather inside white tent. I did not have much interest, and I also did not realize that the importance of conferences. I remember one conference back there was on Finite Element Method, because I saw banner, and I also saw a conference proceedings in one library after I left UOR and I was trying to find some papers on FEM.

At AIT/Bangkok, Dr. A.S. Balasubramaniam used to organize conferences local and international almost once a year, and he used to ask students to participate in the conferences, and I got a couple of opportunities to participate on the conferences that he and his colleagues organized. My adventure to conference began there.

In 1990, he organized the 9th ARC on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering at Bangkok. I was given a special role of taking care of SLIDE mounting and transparency sheet checking, because in the previous conference I had shown my ability of avoiding any mistake, especially, after a student made a terrible mistake in the slide mounting. It was a wonderful job, because every presenter used to pass through your conversation. Some Professors were very kind, and some were very strict, and a few of them were very rude and thought that I was a paid salary man and hardly realized that I was just a volunteer to reduce the cost of conference. Anyway, in conference hall if there is any great job you would like to do, you should select this job because you will get a chance to meet all ELITE class researchers to low graded (impolite) presenters. I met Prof. Tatsuoka (former VP of ISSMGE), Prof. Ishihara (former President of ISSMGE), my own advisor: Prof. Asaoka, Prof. JMD, Prof. Poulos (VP ISSMGE/ Australia), Prof. Jamilonsky (Italy, later President of ISSMGE), Prof. Van Impe (current President of ISSMGE), Dr. Parry, Prof. Kusakabe and many more to be named here. While I was trying to check the OHP-Transparency, some prof. even asked me to make copies of their BW paper into Transparency, and in doing so, I had enough time to talk with them and socialize.

As I was already offered a scholarship and an admission to my doctorate degree research and studies at NU, and I did not have anything to request for my admission and research related stuff (many people think that conferences are like Golf Course for big biz peoples, making a deal) e.g. joint research. So, at one point I encountered one Prof. and he asked me about my self, and asked whether I was planning for Doctoral studies, and I told the truth.

At the same time, I suddenly popped an idea of inquiring whether he is interested in having any international doctoral student in his research lab because AIT was collection of international students, and most of the students there certainly were interested in heading for Doctoral Studies, and some of my good friends were also in the search of Prof. to pursue Ph.D. studies. In my enquiry, the Prof. asked me to introduce some good students because his university has a special foreign students' program in civil engineering. After I finished photocopying his transparencies for his presentation, I talked to a friend, and he showed an interest to meet the prof., and we talked to the Prof. and after a few minutes discussion with the friend Prof. agreed to initiate an admission, and asked the friend to send his CV and an intial application letter to request admission dossier. The friend got an admission, and completed his Ph.D. under the Prof.'s supervision, and he is now enjoying his professional life very well somewhere on this earth.

That is an important by-product of the volunteer work that I did at Bangkok. I am not sure whether people like this kind of approach or not, but my prof. at AIT suggested us to discuss with the participants and explore different opportunities. When I went to several other conferences as a paid participants, I could see it as a chance to extend your friendship, and professional relations. That is a positive side of the conferences. The only negative side of the conferences is that they are getting costlier.

If you don't have sponsors, you can hardly attend them. For example, the ICSMGE organized in India, had registration fee of $1,000 (on site registration fee). When I talked to an Indian Prof. who was among the organizing body, he told me that they saved such a huge chunk of money that the bought a brand new office building for Indian Geotechnical Society, and they started to send their representative to various international conferences on society's own money / fund. They reported that they had 600 international participants (imagine $10000 x 500 = half million dollar) forget about exhibitions and advertisements. It all happened in India, where cost of living is not that expensive. They offered all lunches free of charge. It was great lunch I ever had in a conference. The fashion show was great, you can never find it elsewhere. Still they saved a lot, participants took a great memory. But, can you imagine attending this conference on your personal funding? Nope.

Similarly, in 1996, the Japanese Geotechnical Society Osaka chapter organized GeoEnvironmental conference, and it was believed that they made profit of around 1 million dollars from the conference. The 10th ARC organized in PRC China was not that appreciated by many participants, because the Chinese Government was involved, and it is believed that the respective ministries took the lion's share from the conference fee, and the organizers hardly made a good saving. The conference participants were not much satisfied, and they twisted the trend of offering a chance for ISSMGE VP Asia to be nominated from the ARC organizing host country, and delayed the nomination, and finally, nominated someone else: from South Korea. I saw a politics there. I was one of the voter, and I did not like the politics played by the member countries against Chinese Geotechnical Society's interest to hold VP Asia Position. I think that this kind politics is very dominant in ISSMGE's Executive body, and TCs. The member countries from developing world, are exploited when it comes to voting. They are merely proxy voters.

It not only happens in our ISSMGE, but it happens everywhere. A few years ago, when the Salt Lake City organized winter olympic, the scandal broke out, and some african country voters voted Salt Lake City because it promised to provide scholarship in US Universities to the kids of these voting members. So, you will see the JGS will always try to have its member as VP Asia every alternate term. Prof. Ishihara, Prof. Tatsuoka, and who is next waiting for after the term of Prof. Madhav from India ends? It will be certainly from Japan. Japan has money, and poor Asian countries will vote for Japanese candidate because of several reasons.

So, international conferences are great and not so great in different perspectives. It is good to go to one or two conferences every year, but not the way most Japanese Prof. are seen in each major conferences. Please remember that I am not criticizing Japanese Professors, but the way they attend conferences is meaningless because they hardly participate in open discussion, neither input in two way discussions. They put questions 3-4 minute long, and answer is mostly "YES" or "NO", and it is asked to someone whom they know very well, and the sole purpose is to please him, not for real discussions. An Indian friend of mine who once asked so many questions in a conference, had confessed that "you can not make a Japanese speak in the conference, and you can not make an Indian stop speaking, and being an Indian, I have a privelege to ask question here ......".

Well, there is a big-mouthed Prof. K from K. University, he looks at your face, and if he finds that you are not from developed countries, then you will get mud slinging word from him. He uses derogatory words like "GAIJIN" openly in society's meeting or via society's email server. He will be heading for ISSMGE's Asia VP very soon. Because of his big-mouth, the peace loving majority of Japanese Prof. can not speak against him or stand against him. He is very exceptionally "GHATIYA Prof. I have ever seen in Japan". I witnessed this myself when I attended a conference in one ARC on SMGE, and another incident happened when I submitted one technical paper (he used the derogatory word "GAIJIN" to me) to JSCE's one committee where he was a member. I was very surprised to see the comment he wrote to the editor who was handling my paper.

Rest Later.