A scientist should behave as a good citizen in the scientific community. You cannot  expect that other colleagues perform all the unpleasant jobs and that you can spent all your time on science.  I am referring to low-reward activities like reviewing papers, reviewing grant proposals, sitting on review panels, being an editor of a scientific journal, sitting on program committees and – which is the subject of my present post – really organizing a conference.

Conference organizers receive many complaints
Am I a good citizen as far organizing conferences is concerned? I have only organized a dozen one-day meetings, most of them only national. So indeed I am not a very good citizen in this respect. I have been to close to people who did organize large international conference. I can assure you that organization of a 4 or 5-day international conference which a couple of hundred participants is murder. Leave alone conferences for more than thousand people. Those mammoth-sized conferences should be left to professionals.

Long before a conference actually will take place participants start to complain about not being an invited speaker. Or they lament over not being reimbursed for travel or accommodation costs. They complain about the, indeed, immense conference fees. During the conference they complain about the hotel accommodation. About the sound quality in lecture halls, which indeed is always crappy. They complain about the shortage of food and drinks at the banquet. Complain about the high prize for the conference dinner tickets. A number of prima donna’s will not show up and others will request a change of the schedule, so that they can immediately leave after having delivered their presentation. Rather than conferences I appreciate much more summer schools. The atmosphere is much more relaxed and they involve far fewer participants. The French Cargese summer schools (which large subsidies from the French government) are close to paradise.

My Advice
Try to stay away from organizing a conference. I have always been quite successful in not organizing them.

Our conference
But the last week I have been very busy with starting to eh, eh,  organize a conference. I am willing to defend the statement that Philip Anderson (Physics Nobel prize 1977)  is the best (in the sense of most creative) scientist ever. Yes, I have heard about Newton and Einstein. Anderson published a paper – exactly fifty years ago – that revolutionized the way physicists think about disorder. He predicted a phenomenon, now called Anderson localization.  Two colleagues of mine, Bart van Tiggelen and Diederik Wiersma came a few weeks ago with the suggestion to celebrate 50 years of Anderson localization and they asked me to join. So I did. It will be a two-day meeting in Paris.

I am quite busy now with a number of unpleasant jobs, and in no way related to doing real science. We had to make a web site with registration facilities. It will be officially launched in a few days.

Why do I do this, against my own principles? It is as Goethe said Jede Konsequenz führt zum Teufel . One cannot always be a bad guy.

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