I hesitated a great deal before joining this thread, as I do not wish to come across as po-faced and humourless in response to what are probably only light-hearted and throw-away remarks. But in the end, I felt it worth the risk as I think the comments encapsulate, no matter how jokingly, a persistent strand of insularity in some of our professional attitudes. 

I didn't think that the conference programme was particularly 'pseudish' - just couched in a jargon different from our own. In fact, it looked rather interesting. We often, and quite rightly, stress the importance of user or community engagement, outreach, and a whole host of other pluralizing desirables, yet when others actually do engage with records and archives, or ideas about them - in academia, in high or popular culture, in everyday use by various internal and public 'stakeholders' - they not infrequently evoke a defensive or dismissive reaction when such engagement does not conform to our perspectives. This is not to say that our perspectives are not central and essential; but we are not dealing with Records and Archives™, we are dealing with powerful and resonant artefacts and structures of individual, social, and cultural remembering, forgetting, accountability, and sense-making. We should have a curiosity about the endlessly inventive ways in which these are being used and repurposed for both good and ill beyond our own walls; this conference, which is free to attend, offers an opportunity to do just that. Maybe the papers and presentations will be irrelevant navel-gazing, maybe they will be thought-provoking or entertaining. Either way, if I were still living in London, I'd certainly be tempted to go and hear what was on offer.

Here endeth today's po-faced and homourless intervention ...

Regards,