Now why would academics not want to combine a conference with a cruise?

Our cruise ship anchored in Germany during one of the shore excursion days after the first conference day at sea.

Conducting conferences and training workshops on board large cruise ships is a trend that the medical profession established well but unfortunately this kind of conferencing is not very common for other disciplines. In 2012 and 2013 the Clute Institute organized cruise conferences in Europe, linked with a more traditional conference that preceded the cruise conference in the city of departure. These conference cruises catered for all four of the Clute Institute’s research publishing tracks and I am sure it could have expanded substantially and developed into a very nice trend if they only would persist and allow the concept to grow.  

For a number of years now, I also follow the Academic Forum conferences which usually offered an annual cruise conference just before Christmas. So I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that the Academic Forum is expanding their cruise conferences for 2017 by adding a conference cruise to Alaska in May, and another cruise conference in October (of which the details are not yet available), in addition to the December conference cruise.

The call for papers for the May cruise conference to Alaska is already open and there is a long lists of topics on which research can focus, grouped under the themes of Business, Public Administration and University pedagogy. The cruise reservations are also open and the special offer for participants ends 16 November 2016, so if you are interested, ensure that you visit the Academic Forum page.

One of the greatest advantages of a cruise conference is that you accommodation is fixed and you do not have to pack and unpack every second day, but at the same time you are constantly moving from one exciting and beautiful place to another, at no extra transportation costs. You also have ample time for networking with other conference attendees and the conference organizers.  

So why are there hundreds of academic conferences listed on the web, but I can only find one academic cruise conference that is not linked to the medical profession? Could it be that the cruise conference is more expensive? Probably, but the cruise is inclusive of all meals and you do not need to pay extra for transportation between ports. The conference facilities are usually excellent on the ships and the ‘at sea’ days provide enough time for engaging and stimulating academic discussions and proper time slots for presentations.

Therefore, please conference organizers, do look into and invest in providing this option for the broad academic community. 

We R roaming

This is me at OR Tambo, sitting in the coffee shop on our way to London.

It is a well-established ritual. After dropping our bags, clearing security and going through passport control at OR Tambo Airport in Johannesburg (which is our local airport), we will sit down at a coffee shop in the international zone and while we wait for the coffee I would call my mom and children to say goodbye (again) and then switch my social media status to ‘we are roaming’.
There is something magical about this action. It puts an official pause-mute-stop stamp on the normal day-to-day activities and it unlocks a sense of adventure, expectation and unknown possibilities. Within these words lies another world, far removed from the regular and almost predictable routine of commuting between home and office. Not that this status is to be considered bad or uneventful, it is just not as exciting as the roaming status. You see, although we drive in the same car on the same road to the same destination each weekday, things are never the same. I learned long ago to look, see and experience each day with a ‘fresh’ approach and an open mind and to be alert for signs of change and development. Each day there are new things to look at, wonder about and draw inspiration from. This morning the tar road leading up to the university was covered in a purple blanket of Jacaranda flowers after the wind and rain of last night shook the trees. The people enjoying a free workout on the newly constructed outside gym in Jubilee Park looked determined to make up for the time lost yesterday due to the heavy morning rain that draw a grey curtain over the park. And the street vendors were proudly displaying their freshly baked treats for passers-by to see and smell and buy. The familiar places and some familiar faces are never quite the same…but I am getting side-tracked.
So back to our pre-boarding routine of changing the social media status on my mobile phone. Seeing the status updated to ‘we are roaming’ can be compared to the excitement of Christmas eve when I was a child. I would wake up somewhere in the middle of the night and seeing the bulging pillowcase at the bottom-end of the bed would make my heart skip a beat or two. Always, to the side of the pillowcase, there would be a beautifully wrapped present but it was the content of the pillowcase that made me sit up and reach down to make sure that there was indeed a large square box type lucky dip tucked between the sweets and balloons and party stuff. Confirmation through feeling the shape of the box and gently shaking it to make sure that there are lots of stuff moving inside, made me sigh with relief and I would fall back on the pillows to sleep until morning – assured that Christmas will be marvellous.

Just like the content of the lucky packet, the experiences of travelling are not always exceptional or without disappointment, or simply just not nice. Sometimes one of the toys in the lucky dip was broken and the disappointment is comparable to being sick while travelling - the feeling of 'you are loosing out'. Other times, the colour of some of the toys was not what I would prefer it to be - I do NOT like orange or green - and that I would compare today to the hotel rooms we often get - not the view or the floor I would prefer, but the best we can afford on a very tight budget, and most of the time, I quickly adapt to make the most of what we got. However, the most powerful emotion of holding and opening the lucky dip, compares with changing the social media status emotion of excitement. The endless opportunities and possibilities, the not knowing exactly what to expect, and the hope that this experience will be simply the best, is capturing the real magic of travelling into one exiting moment.