As a bursary recipient I have been asked to write a reflective blog about my experience of the 2024 GEA Conference in Port Macquarie.  I want to express my great appreciation for being given the bursary; without it I most definitely wouldn’t have been able to attend.  The only other GEA Conference I’ve attended was the previous one in Australia — 2018 in Newcastle. In some way these two conferences represent the very beginning and the very end of my PhD journey and that makes them special.  I’ve been to other conferences and seen a variety of ways of doing them, so for my reflection of GEA 2024 I want to consider the choices we make in holding a conference.

First, I want to consider location.  As someone from Adelaide I know how nice it is when events are in town, and I don’t have to travel to the larger cities.  No doubt this is even more so the case for people at regional locations like Port Macquarie.  It’s wonderful to visit and celebrate these regional centres of knowledge. It’s also fun to be far away from our regular life!  However, it’s expensive to get to these places, and often they are holiday towns, so accommodation is expensive with less likelihood of having friends or family to stay with; does this then exclude more people? The vast majority of people need to fly or make long car trips; what’s the environmental impact?  Also, the towns aren’t usually set up for late night conference revelry (much of the fun and relationship building of conferences); 9pm is pretty early for everything to be shut. How do we weigh these issues up and choose a location?

Second, I want to consider keynote speakers.  I met Gina! Gina Chick! The winner of Alone Australia!  I got a photo with her and had a chat at the social event.  Huge bragging rights in my house; my kids think my work is way cooler now.  Hmm, but what did she talk about?  What did she say about education? About gender?  Did she even talk about them? Most certainly don’t want to bag Gina, she’s a friggin’ legend (even if she didn’t ask me about my research), but is a celebrity speaker outside the field the right person to keynote?  How much does it cost to get a celebrity?  Are all speakers paid the same?

Third, I want to consider conference themes.  “Be the change” was the conference theme.  I now recall that was what Gina was speaking to… we should all be building a stronger connection to nature.  How important is the theme though?  I don’t mean this particular theme, I mean conference themes in general. Are they meaningful?  Does there need to be one?  Are the organisation’s key themes sufficient (e.g. gender, education)?  I’ve never not presented because my work doesn’t fit the theme, I’ve never even considered the conference theme in writing a presentation — have I done it all wrong?

Fourth, I want to consider modes of presenting.  This is kind of personal because from what I could tell I was the only person offering something in the “other” category.  I set up tables with the provocations I’d used in my research into how young children engage with a nonbinary framework of gender.  They were playful table-top activities designed for 4-5 year olds — both research methodology and teaching activity.  Was this silly?  Was I just embarrassing myself?  I know it entertained my friend’s two-year-old so she could attend to a talk.  Do we want to encourage people to share their research in alternative ways at academic conferences? 

Fifth, and finally, I want to consider scheduling.  There were more early years talks on education and gender than any other conference I’d been to.  It was so exciting for me — a chance to hear the people I’ve cited speak. However, several were on at the same time in different rooms making it difficult to attend them all.   I felt intense anxiety about walking out of someone’s talk to go attend one in another room — it’s like leaving the dinner table before everyone is done, my mother would kill me!  Or is that totally acceptable?  What about the one session I was speaking in, could I have left that after my own presentation?  There was a recording I could watch later – is that enough?  I saw talks I wouldn’t have otherwise seen — was that helpful?

So much to think about!  Organising and running a conference is hard work with so many decisions to make and I thank the organisers for GEA 2024.