Jamie Heckert mentioned that people go to conferences for all sorts of
differing reasons. This paper (below) that I just remembered about
discusses some of these reasons.
I've included the abstract; very appropriate to this discussion...
Steven
Scottish Agricultural College
Edinburgh
__________________________________________________________________
Journal of Sustainable Tourism Volume: 9 Number: 6 Page: 451–470
Conference Tourism: A Problem for the Environment, as well as for
Research?
Karl G. Høyer and Petter Naess
The increase in professional trips to conferences and seminars made by
employees in the 'knowledge industries' presents an environmentally
worrying trend in mobility in contemporary post-industrial society. A
number of factors are involved. Globalisation and regional competition
encourage host cities and institutions to put themselves on the conference
map. For the individual traveller, conferences and seminars offer escape
from daily routines and the chance to experience new, perhaps exotic,
places. But trips to distant conferences can have serious environmental
impacts, especially if made by airplane. Because of the aggressive impact
of greenhouse gas emissions in the upper atmosphere, their threat to the
global climate is more serious than similar trips made at surface level.
In addition, the time spent on such trips competes with other tasks:
conference participation takes scarce time resources available to
university academics for research. In the age of electronic communication,
it is questionable whether conferences are effective arenas for
communicating and gathering knowledge.
|