Gimme!
Distressing as it is to see gimme that stuff behavior on the conference exhibit
floor, it is also a cause for concern as it migrates into the interactions among
academics.
Any chance you attended one of the fall 2005 IT conferences? Back in October
(it seems so long ago), I was one among the thousands who made the pilgrimage
to the annual gathering of academe’s IT tribes: the Educause
Conference in Orlando, and the Conference on Information Technology (League
for Innovation in the Community College) in Dallas. Taken together, these
two events drew some 9,000 people; about two-thirds from campuses, and a third
representing the firms that provide IT and eLearning products/services to colleges
and universities.
Both events schedule pre-conference programs of professional development seminars
ahead of the official “opening” of the conference. And “opening”
is probably the right word for what happens at both events, as the doors open
to the exhibit floor where the representatives of eLearning and IT firms, large
and small, await the arrival of conference attendees. Ahead of that opening,
small groups circling the doors to the exhibit hall eventually become large
crowds. And when the doors open, there is a rush as the crowd moves forward,
onward and into the exhibit hall.
What prompts this crowd behavior? Why would grown academics and campus IT professional
staff engage in a kind of “land rush” into the exhibit halls at
the Educause and League conferences? Answer: They rush for stuff.
Yes, dear reader, it’s true. Your peers and colleagues rush the floor
for stuff: t-shirts, pens and pencils, notepads, backpacks, briefcases,
and other goodies with corporate logos. Some also rush to get their names into
the raffles held by individual vendors; others rush to be among the first to
visit a specific set of exhibitor booths in order to get their conference card
stamped so that they might be eligible for a later raffle for tech toys.
It’s not by chance that some of the firms exhibiting at the Educause
and League conferences provide super-sized shopping bags (with their corporate
logos): After all, if you are serious about getting stuff, you need a bag for
all of it, right? Sure, the bags often contain a lot of paper—advertising
collateral and product information—from the eLearning and IT firms exhibiting
at the conference. But they also end up being crammed with stuff that the conference
attendees get (or sometimes take) from the vendor booths.
Some observer descriptions of the “rush for stuff” are akin to
the descriptions of the land rush of the Western pioneers some 130 years ago;
others are less kind, likening the swarming of attendees to the descent of (academic)
locusts. The corporate folks who work both K-12 and higher education events
report that while the academics are bad, the K-12 teachers are worse. Teachers
(they say jokingly) reach for everything—even busted ballpoint
pens. (In fairness to the teachers, many grab for stuff that they may use for
school supplies, given depleted K-12 school budgets.)
The corporate execs who staff the exhibit booths are captive onlookers to this
behavior. Sure, they are there to answer questions; but the veterans of these
annual events know that they are also on the floor to pass out stuff.
The quest for stuff takes interesting turns. Some years ago, a senior marketing
manager at a tech firm told me he literally gave one of his campus clients the
shirt off his back: “Michael,” said the client, a senior campus
IT officer at a major university, “that’s a great shirt.”
(The firm’s personnel were wearing Rugby-style shirts with a corporate
logo.)
“Thanks,” said the marketer.
“No, you don’t understand,” the client reiterated. “That’s
a great shirt.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“Michael, you’re not listening. That’s a great shirt; I want
it.”
“Oh, okay,” Michael said, seeing the light at last. “I understand.
I’ll send it to you after the conference.”
“Michael, I really like the shirt. I want to go home with it.”
“But I’ve been wearing it for the past few days while I do booth
duty. I’ll wash it and send it to you.”
Not good enough for the client. “I want it now,” he said.
Michael found a t-shirt he could wear as he was packing up the booth, and did,
in fact, give the customer the shirt off his back.
It’s interesting—often entertaining—to watch the gimme
behavior of grown academics and campus IT professionals at these conferences.
The corporate personnel often refer to the gimme behavior as one aspect of “the
higher ed handshake” the extended academic hand that reaches for your
pocket and grabs stuff.
Distressing as it is to see the gimme behavior at work with the vendors, it
is also a cause for concern as it migrates into the interactions among academics.
Of course our medium of exchange is not t-shirts or notepads: our medium is
content; intellectual property.
Consider, for example, an e-mail I received following my presentation summarizing
the 2005 Campus Computing
Survey at the Educause Conference in Orlando: “I loved your survey
discussion. I would like to use some points for a presentation I have early
next week. Can you send me a copy? It was not posted yet [on the Educause conference
Web site]. Thank you in advance.” Admittedly, it was a nice comment about
my presentation. But it was also a clear statement of expectation: gimme,
as I need your materials for my work.
Perhaps this is simply part of the culture of academe—an expectation
that we give (or “share”) stuff, an expectation that we are entitled
to one another’s “stuff”—t-shirts and notepads from
the vendors; content, syllabi, and intellectual property from other academics
and professionals in the campus community. Perhaps. But I’m also reminded
of the comment I once heard from an executive in the publishing industry: “Faculty
feel everything should be free—except their stuff, which should
cost a lot of money!”
Maybe gimme behavior is simply endemic to who we are and what we do in academe.
Then again, maybe the Internet and the Web have simply made us more aware of
our gimme behavior, made it more visible as people we know—and many we
don’t know—reach for our stuff.
