2 weeks ago a team of Huddersfield academics were in Leuven, Belgium for the 2015 European Marketing Academy Conference presenting research and networking furiously. Dr Brendan Canavan, Dr Qing Ding, Dr Claire McCamley and David Colley.
Post-conference consensus seems to be that it was slick, professionally run, and generous with the hospitality (combining beer tasting with poster presentations was a insightful step - fingers crossed other conferences follow suit, and apply to the paper presentations as well). Leuven and it's University is beautiful: a Belgian Cambridge. And I can only envy the local academics with their well fed, cycling, smiling students. Not one sniggered as I walked past in corridors!
However, the reputation for being rather cliquey seems to have held up. Far be it for me to crudely stereotype, but some incredibly up tight and rude French delegates had me wanting to strangle them with their Hermes scarves. The predominance of quants was also somewhat exclusive (or f*****g boring as less tasteful colleagues than myself put it), and the predominance of Belgian PhD students delivering rather underwhelming papers raised some eyebrows *cough corruption cough*.
As usual I found myself wondering quite regularly 'why am I here?' I swapped about 3 business cards (mostly not with escorts) and had some friendly but weak critical feedback. But then some sessions were stimulating, fun and reinvigorated one's sense of enthusiasm for new research and creative inquiry. Which I suppose is what it is all about, would have just been nice to have more of it.
They did have clowns at the gala dinner though which was a first and genuinely funny.
