Day of the until-now-dreaded presentation!

Since I was a very young age, I have always been first on any alphabetical list (except when I was in the Fourth Form at school – about 9 or 10 years old - when ’Abrahams’ knocked me [Adrien-Kirby] off my perch) and this year’s IABS conference was no exception.  I was down to present first at 8.30am this morning (6.30am GMT). 

Although there were moments in the past few days when my nerves had taken a more disabling grip on me, the hours/minutes leading up to my ‘time’ were filled with calm and cheerful banter with my colleagues.  Good sign.

The presentation went smoothly (I promise that I had every intention of putting a video of it up on here for you to see but I had cunningly left my camera on the plane, to give myself an alibi!!) and the criticism afterwards was constructive and well-founded.  That, coupled with conversations with some awe-inspiring academics afterwards, fuelled my research in this area… it’s always good to be well-received!

I spent the rest of today attending various other presentations and symposia looking at further developments of the academic research in this area and, in other words, ‘where knowledge building (and distribution!) should go next’!  Very interesting it was to hear that the academic guru (the I one I was star-struck by yesterday) supporting collaboration with the Arts, in order to gain further insight into the anthropological and historical contributions that could be made to the field of Business and Society.  I’ll be sure to revisit that seed in a few months now it’s been planted in the back of my mind!

Right, I’ve been summoned for dinner!  Hope you’re all well and thanks again for reading!