![[Wizard holding up a candle]](../../images/wizard.gif)
The First Worlds Skeptics Conference was held by CSICOP in June in Buffalo. By any standard this 20th anniversary celebration of CSICOP will be judged a vindication of the foresight and leadership of Paul Kurtz, his peers, and recruits. There is no question that the rational, objective and scientific "World View" now has a an organizing center from which mystical and pseudoscientific alternatives can expect a response. The fact that 1200 persons from around the world spent no little time and money to attend this event is a tribute to the world wide need for community and learning in the face of the power of personal truth and nonsense. I drove the 500 miles from Cincinnati alone and arrived early in order to meet other skeptics and.... it didn't happen. This isn't quite true, for serendipity, and my active search actually allowed me to run into a few like souls but only by violating the rules.
I don't mean to besmirch the "Law of Cosmic Skeptical Union", but these guys can learn a little about conference development, if they want to. I have attended a few CSICOP Conferences and it is certainly not my intention to spoil anybody's parade, but things aren't all well in the land of skeptics and, who has a greater willingness to listen....? I want to tell you as well about all of the reasons you should have attended. You missed some wonderful things among the dross. Lets start on the down side. The focused, regionally produced training sessions, (Portland, Lexington, Buffalo) have been quite successful because they encourage the exchange of ideas, and they allow it to happen. As attenders increase from 150 (Regional), to 500 (Annual), to 1200 (World Wide) the possibility for personal contacts disappeared. In Buffalo the audience was in five hotels located perhaps one half mile from the convention site. Unlike a national professional convention, even one of modest dimensions, there was no off campus convention center. Scheduled events started at 9:00 AM which required rising at 7:00 or so if you wanted to hit the book sales, get breakfast, and catch the school bus to the on campus site. The final scheduled talks ended around 10:00 PM which didn't allow much off schedule mixing.
The AM events were a mere three hours in extent. I belong to a couple of professional associations, and none has such amazing beliefs in the human capacity for retention, either physical, spiritual, or mental as to set limits. Worse yet, there was no time over three full days to meet, run down, make contact with friends, foes, or common contacts. I met S. Premand, the wonderful editor of the Indian Skeptic for three minutes before one event. The head of one of the Japanese Skeptics Associations, with an enormous stack of Prometheus Books at his side, apologized, and went to sleep during the opening session. The large hall was not only acoustically suspicious but also fitted with a woolly sound system that had everybody unhappy and confused. Beyond the cross aisle every thing sounded like mushy German, Spanish, or Australian. I recorded from row one.
The great things were, of course, finding participants with common interests and projects, and listening to the best of the presentations from the program. A greater variety of parallel sessions would certainly improve the program. I heard others mentioning round tables, poster sessions, and other informal venues as worthy additions to the standard three hour sessions. The great things from the program will have to wait till next time.
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