Conferences

After my pre-millennium “trilogy”, I vowed that I’d never organize another conference. Too stressful. Too time-consuming. Too much of a good thing. Less is always more and conferences, no matter how quirky, quickly become ho-hum, so what, surprise me.

While attending an ACR conference in Salt Lake City, however, my old DCU mucker, Darach Turley (he of the grand tour) volunteered to host the 2003 European ACR conference in Dublin. I offered to help him out, given my – ahem – vast experience of conference organization and, to his eternal regret, Darach agreed.

Well, I can be a bit of a – how can I put this? – marketing martinet, especially when it comes to conferences. And poor Darach felt the full force of my temper tantrums. But, ever the gentleman, Darach put up with me and, despite his not inconsiderable handicap, he managed to pull it all together. Brilliantly. The conference took place in early-June 2003; the theme was “All Changed, Changed Utterly?”, from the famous poem by W.B. Yeats; more than 200 consumer researchers turned up; and a very good time was had by all.

I myself presented a paper at the conference. I didn’t intend to. Really! However, I was one paper short in a session and, Hell, someone had to step into the breach. The presentation was on Madonna, that self-marketer supreme. I should perhaps point out, for those of you who tackle the transcript, that two giant screens showed Madonna videos as I talked. One started with “Material Girl”, hence the joke at the beginning of the talk. Just don’t ask about the end of the presentation. It was a truly gruesome sight, trust me. Think yourself lucky you missed it.