I attended a conference this past weekend, and I noticed that the average age of the population of the conference has trended dramatically upward over the past four years. Four years ago, most were in their twenties and thirties with a smattering of older people. Last weekend, it was much more like a thirties/forties gathering with a large number of much older people.
Now, I like old people, don’t get me wrong, but an absence of young people, IMHO, indicates a movement that isn’t doing a good job appealing to the next generation of activists. This has been lurking in the back of my mind, and this morning I read a scathing commentary on the Freedom From Religion Foundation Convention (which, coincidentally, took place the same weekend as the convention I was a part of):
There was something like 700 or more people in attendance, and almost all of the meeting time was spent in tight focus on one person standing behind a lectern.
What is our goal at these kinds of meetings? It is to organize. To interact with fellow freethinkers. To get ideas that we can carry home to help advance our goals. To meet new people and to network. To be entertained. Strings of long talks do this very poorly.
Another problem: attendance at this kind of meeting is largely on the gray side of middle age, with very little in the way of young people. Why? Because it’s boring! We should be engaging and recruiting more college-aged people, and this format just won’t do it.
Mix up the format a lot. Every session does not have to be a talking head above a lectern…
I strongly recommend to anyone organizing this kind of freethought convention that they get in touch with some members of the SF community. Science fiction people know at a deep level how to put together a first rate meeting experience that will engage diverse interests, and be informative and entertaining, and most importantly, will appeal to people under the age of 60.
IMHO, a lectern and a speaker with a Powerpoint presentation is the last resort of an uncreative concept. I look back at my weekend, and the best part of it was the part I didn’t record: the meeting of people between lectures, the long hang-out-and-talk-and-drink sessions in the hospitality suite, and the encounters with other conventioneers outside of the convention halls at restaurants, homes, and hotel rooms.
I’m not saying such activist-style conferences should be totally unstructured, but they really need a way to engage people. I have a long tolerance for sitting on my butt and listening to people, and even I grew weary during several presentations.