Garnering intelligence at the SAEON Graduate Student Network conference

“As a group of about forty students we learned that other disciplines are worthy of our attention, that other students are worthy of our collaboration, and that other ideas are worthy of our consideration.” – Matt Child Matthew Child (in the light-blue shirt) interacting with fellow students after presenting his work to the GSN.

By Matt Child, MSc (Conservation Biology), UCT

I was sceptical about attending the first SAEON Graduate Student Network (GSN) conference.

Forced interactions usually entail dull mediocrity, interspersed with free food and booze … the latter being a big drawing card to such events, sometimes the only drawing card.

Indeed, true to our student stereotypes, our first order of business was a general ‘meeting’ down in the dungeons of the University of Cape Town, otherwise known as the UCT pub (or club, depending on how elitist one is feeling). I was feeling brave, so I arrived by myself.

Yet, rather than being overwhelmed by hyperactive, name-tag bearing Golden-Key groupies (like most events at UCT) I was treated to a free beverage from Dirk Snyman (one of the GSN committee members) and an entertaining conversation about the mind-blowing array of beer found in Belgium. We sat by a log-fire, ensconced. It seemed like we could have been on holiday somewhere in the Alps for all I know, if it weren’t for the stuffed Forest Hog staring at me from across the room with its baleful black holes-for-eyes. It saddened me.

Yet as the room began to fill up with friendly, unthreatening faces, I soon forgot about the dejected hog and realised that I was actually having a good time. This was surprising, given my nervous insecurity at large crowds of people in cramped conditions. Indeed, for most of that first night I had retreated time and time again to the few UCT students I knew there, trying not to look anyone else in the eye lest they judge me out of hand.

There was good reason for my anxiety, as I found out over dinner (a lovely buffet meal, made exciting by the patrolling buffet Nazi whose sole job it was to make sure we had one, and only one, plate of food): the conference was dominated by Vaalies, namely Kruger and Wits people. Having studied undergraduate with nasty, Joburg-bashing Capetonians but having grown up in the leafy confines of a Joburg suburb, I felt strangely torn. Being shrewd, I decided to withhold my split allegiances until I knew exactly what I was up against.

There was also a fair smattering of Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Pretoria-faring students, just not in the invasive numbers of Wits and Skukuza. The Vaalies were most certainly running the show. After such a short-lived burst of optimism about this conference, stormy weather looked like it was brewing. I subtly crept home after dinner, before anyone could discover my shady turncoat origins.

The Kruger conspiracy

We woke up early the next morning, like warriors, and traipsed across the barely-lit plazas of upper campus to the focal point of the conference, the seminars. If I were to tell you that we spent from eight in the morning till five in the evening listening to talks you would be, justifiably, horrified. Indeed, this long and arduous prospect terrified me. I couldn’t quite believe the programme. Who were these strange GSN people forcing us into such blatant, eye-gouging torture? Vaalies. Only they would have the audacity for this.

I became convinced early that day that the whole conference was just some kind of Kruger conspiracy; a malicious new method of garnering intelligence about UCT. They wanted to bring down the competition from within, how cunning! While I was ruminating on this, growing bitterer by the second, something strange happened. I actually started listening to one of the talks. And it was pretty interesting.

It was a talk on something called ‘deep structure analysis’, given by Chris Barichevy. At first I thought it was a cheap ruse from yet another Wits/Kruger spy; deep deception analysis more like it. But when I actually gave him a chance, I realised that not only was it an extremely well-executed seminar but its content was directly applicable to my own research. I was partially humbled. Lucky shot I figured. One good seminar in, like, a million.

The more I started to listen, however, the more bearable the proceedings became, perhaps even....enjoyable. I had not expected the word ‘enjoyable’ to manifest itself during the conference. Yet there it was, loud and clear, singing defiantly against my negativity. With so many speakers, from so many different backgrounds, from so many different institutions, and with so many different agendas, there was no way that one would not come away from the day a more learned person.

The second day was much the same and I realised that while the talks had been going on, each with completely disparate topics, I had subconsciously been making links between entirely different disciplines. I was shocked at my unprecedented insight and, indeed, excitement over this inflowing information.

During the tea breaks, that were garnished with lovely baked goods and sweet teas from China (OK, maybe Checkers), I found myself actually wanting to talk to people whose research I found appealing. In this way I overcame my crippling insecurity issues and fraternised with some Wits and Rhodes students. I even found it in my meagre heart to discuss Kruger-related issues with the Skukuzians, although this took a little time. They talk a lot.

The research trap

At first, people wanting to talk to one about one’s research is bewildering. Why would they want to? Is it some kind of trap? During the tea break, after I’d given my seminar, one of the Rhodes students, Amanda Northrop, started coming towards me. She had given a fascinating seminar on artificial neural networks, of which I didn’t understand much but was in great awe. This made me slightly fearful of an impending intellectual mismatch in which I would come out the clear loser.

‘I’m sorry, but I didn’t quite understand your algorithm.’

Curses, she was on to me! My fraudulent scientific career was over! I peered up at her sheepishly but found no piercing, science-busting cruelty in her eyes. I thought about her question for a second. Either this was the strangest pick-up line I’d ever heard, or she was genuinely interested in my research. A novelty either way.

Having someone in one’s own generation really engage you on a one-on-one basis about research and results and possibilities, not in a bored, ‘oh-please-let-this-be-over’ way, but in a truly interested manner is a remarkably satisfying affair. My friends, bless their sordid souls, all studied business science. Conversing with them is like soliloquising to a group of brain-dead, monosyllabic parrots.

My family, bless their empty enthusiasm, nod vaguely and change the subject to urban scandal. It’s so refreshing meeting people whose passion rings true like some kind of déjà vu. As if you suddenly remember ‘Oh ja, this is why I forsook the golden handshake of commerce, this is why I do what I do. There are people out there that believe in this too’.

It was during these magical seminar-laden days and tea break oases that I discovered something fairly alarming. Some of the Witsies (as I now called them, so as to make them sound less threatening) were researching similar areas of ecology to me, just at a different scale. Obviously, mine was the larger scale, but that’s neither here nor there.

Even more alarming was that they didn’t try to beat me with sticks when they found out. Instead they wanted to ‘discuss’. Maybe even ‘collaborate’. Intriguing concept. So it was that I was finally allowed to breach the formerly impenetrable laager of Witsie students. And I didn’t even have to use guile or deceit.

On the third day, there was light. The reason for why the GSN had organised this conference suddenly became very clear to me. It was to break down the hostile walls that people like me had been unwittingly building since the time of our undergraduate inceptions.

Rambo-style conservation can’t cut it anymore

The details of what had been said or what had not been said in the past couple of days were not as important as what I like to (unimaginatively) call ‘realisations’. The realisation that there is life after UCT (or Wits or Rhodes etc. etc.); the realisation that there is life outside of ecology; the realisation that not all social scientists are failed ‘real’ scientists; the realisation that one actually may not have all the answers to one’s discipline; the realisation that the world needs collaborations and mass-scale pooling of knowledge and wisdom if there is to even be a world in the next century. Rambo-style conservation can’t cut it anymore.

The third day was also a day for integration of ideas and spit-balling of entirely new ones. We attended three different workshops, each fraught with contention and raised blood-pressures. Good, healthy workshops in other words. These interactive sessions allowed us further opportunity to follow up on some of the ideas we’d been exposed to during the seminars and get to grips with different modes of thinking.

I thought my thinking had rocked the party until one of the workshops inadvertently highlighted my ‘conceptual’ nature. I am, by way of practice, too vague. Thus, the workshops helped me to make a tangible difference in the way I approach future research. This is a good thing.

Yes, we did have to wear name tags. To me, this has always been extremely distasteful. Some kind of bourgeois corporate hobby; organised fun for a used-car salesmen convention or something. You can imagine my surprise, then, to recall that it hadn’t bothered me at all during the SAEON GSN conference. Perhaps that means that I’m maturing as a person. Unlikely. I think it reflects more the fact that there was so much going on and so many juicy new projects and methods and facts and far out theories and far out results (I’m still flabbergasted with Nic’s results, in a good way) that I didn’t even have time to dwell upon the misfortune of my name tag.

I’m not entirely sure what the sign of well-organised, well-executed student conference is, but I’m pretty sure that not noticing one’s name tag is close. As a group of about forty or so students we learned, in an emphatic manner, that other disciplines are worthy of our attention, that other students are worthy of our collaboration, and that other ideas are worthy of our consideration. There’s the conference fee back right there.

I was sceptical about the usefulness of a student-run postgraduate conference. Next time, however, I’ll be the first to sign up, even if there’s no free food and booze.

Actually, that was a rash decision. But I’ll definitely think about it.