President Linda Waite,on page 4, discusses a few of the pros and cons of the direction the annual meetings have taken over the last few years. Beginning in earnest with President Udry, the annual meeting has been transformed from a small, very competitive set of paper reading sessions to a more inclusive set of presentations of varied formats. More sessions with more presentation styles including posters, panels, and organized thematic sessions were added to the traditonal format of paper reading sessions from individual submissions. Both President Waite's column and an extended discussion that occurred at the Spring meeting of the Board of Directors suggests that the changes in the annual meeting are not fully endorsed by all members of the organization and, thus, warrant discussion. Do you have strong opinions about the new formats?
Changes in the annual meeting are, also, harbingers of change in the nature of the PAA as an organization. Expanding the breadth of presentation formats also changes the mix of participants. Formal paper reading sessions attract primarily members employed in universities for whom published scholarly papers are the primary motivation for participating in the annual meetings. PAA members from federal, state, and local governments, and businesses are less focused on the published journal article. Posters and panels expand the potential medium of communication. More inclusive acceptance rules also encourage neophyte researchers to submit work that is independent of their faculty mentors. The strong meeting attendance for both Miami and San Francisco, where the number of registered participants was larger than any other meeting in PAA history, suggests that the strategy of inclusion has worked.
The transformation is not without costs, which should be noted. PAA meetings have always had the reputation of being small, tightly structured meetings where cutting edge research is presented. The papers you hear in April or May are sure to appear in the journals of the associated disciplines and demographically focused publications in the following year. It is where you go to hear the core debates in the field argued in person by their protaganists. Will this quality remain? Some have argued that it cannot. Should it remain, if the tradeoff is a smaller more monocultural organization that struggles to survive financially? The organization of the annual meeting is not independent of the nature of the PAA itself. These are issues that the membership must struggle with.
Daniel Vining of the University of Pennsylvania views the issue of Demography as a disposal problem rather than a philosophical one and offers a solution.
From Daniel R. Vining, Jr., University of Pennsylvania (3/31/95)
"For what it is worth (and I doubt it's worth very much), let me say that I concur wholeheartedly with the sentiments of your correspondents regarding Demography as expressed in PAA Affairs, Spring 1995.
"The arrival of Demography is greeted by me with utter dread. What can I do with it, I ask myself? Que faire? It's just deadweight in my box. So far, I've been able to put it in some other faculty member's box or give it to a graduate student. I never let it in my office. But for those without fellow faculty members or graduate students I suspect Demography does present a problem.
"I only disagree with McDorman on one point. There are mutterings about Demography even in the "elite" institutions, like this one. It's irrelevant, unnecessarily technical, etc. It's a disease that PAA members can't seem to shake.
"May I make a suggestion? Let's make Demography optional. Its disposal 4 times a year is a problem."