Intellectual Party: Lancaster Sociology Summer Conference 2014
Lancaster Sociology conference – July 2007
On the feedback forms last year we asked people what they thought was ‘best’ about the conference and some people told us about the sessions they liked most (“Quote of the day”; “Professors talk about their PhDs”; “Some presentations and quotes debate”; “Second day papers were great”; “Floorball”).
But what most people seemed to like was the atmosphere and people put things like: “Pleasant and happy and non-threatening tone”; “The ambiance, atmosphere: ‘informal-but-formal/serious’”; “Supportive friendly atmosphere”; “Really good atmosphere, both intellectually and socially”; “The supportive, sociable environment”; “The mood established at the conference: … an intellectually stimulating yet extremely enjoyable one”; “The informal nature of it. It was amazing.”
The atmosphere was of course down to who was there and people said what was best was: “To know people from different backgrounds”; “Interaction”; “The presentations, meeting other people”; “Mix between PhD students and members of department”.
We were pleased to hear people being very complimentary about the conference organisation (“Informal and well organised”; “The innovative playful organisation”; Well run, smooth, without being strict”). Of course there were some gripes in response to the question about what was ‘worst’ … but we won’t tell you about those because we plan to fix them!
One person wrote this on the back of their feedback form:
“I just wanted to say how excellent the conference was. All the activities worked well, I really liked the more light-hearted events – they really helped raise the mood of the conference as a whole. I also thought the scale worked well – there were enough people for you to be able to find people with common interests, but it wasn’t so big that it became impersonal. Well done and thank you!”