Geneva Conference

I think I've written in passing about this Escapade (what an Excellent word for it), but it does warrant its own entry. My last post, about feeling old, ties into it.

Last September I went to a conference in Geneva, named with an awfully long acronym I heard about the conference from a friend who was planning to go, trying to raise money or get scholarships to bring himself and a group of students. I was invited as one of those students, but decided to go independently. If they wanted to reimburse me later, when they had actually secured funding, they could feel free to, and if they went I would be affiliated, but I would make my own travel arrangements and those would not be dependent solely on fund raising started late in the game.
This decision for self-reliance came from past experience. The last conference I'd been to organized by the extended family (I am starting to like that analogy) was not a fun one and was poorly planned from the point of view of those at the bottom. As well as some commonsense telling me that the likeliness of such funding coming in, or even Existing, was unlikely at best. It turned out to be a good thing that I decided to plan my own trip on my own funds. The funding my friend thought he had, in fact, never came through.
So it happened that I went independently, as my own benefactor. But I wasn't totally alone. My mother may say that it was she who wouldn't let me go all by myself, but the problem was solved before she knew I was going. The group that I would have been affiliated with would have, in turn, been affiliated with EDC (the Educational Development Center), who I knew from the last conference; the one I thought poorly planned. As it eventually worked out, I was at the conference independent of any official ties, but under the Friendly wing of EDC. Which made me an anomaly of the group. It was a position I liked, since it meant that no one could pin me into anything I didn't like. ^^ Keep 'em guessing.
I was one of the Very few youth there, for a youth conference. There were three others I identified as being in positions similar to my own. One had managed to convince his tribal council to send him to the conference. He had a girlfriend in Geneva. Another was a volunteer for the conference center. And the last was a US student who, if I understood right, had been brought with EDC as a part of their Palestinian group... don't ask me how that worked, I have no idea.
I made two friends while I was there who I still talk to sometimes. Hedaya was a part of EDC's Palestinian squad. Hedaya... Talaya... laughter... instant friendship. Phoebe was with ATHGO's squad, which was the only one to outnumber EDC's. Without a word of introduction, Phoebe came up behind me and poked me in the ribs, producing a squeak. Sound familiar? I poked her right back.

I think most of the youth would agree with me that the conference was crap. And though most of the adults would probably have too much dignity to say it, I'm sure at least have of them thought so too. But since I was not tied to the conference, I didn't care too much. I didn't have to stay in the panel discussions and "workshops" if I didn't want to. I didn't even have to stay at the conference. That freedom was invaluable.
The conference was so bad though, that even the youth who were obligated to stay ditched. I heard from one of the adults later that at the very end of the first day they had asked the youth to speak up and say how they could make the conference better...
And there were no youth left in the room.
I wasn't there. I had bored around mid-afternoon and had taken off with two others to have an excellent conversation while sitting in a park. The sort of conversation that the adults of the conference would have dropped their jaws and bulged their eyes in delighted astonishment at seeing and hearing. And apparently the rest of the kids had done similarly.
I felt no qualms about ditching the next two days, and ended up only sitting through EDC's panel during the rest of the time. Instead, I had great conversations in the halls, slipping in and out of events as they caught my attention and lost my attention. I discovered some very interesting things in this alternate method of attending the conference.
First, I discovered what I had always known about government and certain other institutions: the real stuff happens in the halls, at lunch, over coffee. I simply hadn't had any chance or reason to really apply it, since mine had usually been the place of the mascot, the poster child. Released from that role, I'm glad I was able to recognize the system quickly and play to it. It gives me hope for if I'm ever Not cute. :P
Second, I discovered that I'm able to talk to anyone I encounter and am comfortable enough being the odd one out that I can fit into any group without being noticed (because you only look out of place if you feel out of place). This happened when I was talking to woman over lunch, and about an hour into the conversation I realized that she wasn't there for the youth conference. She was there for a different conference, I believe on non-profits. So I poked my head into some of their workshops. I found them equally dull, so mostly stuck to the halls. But no one ever asked me what I was doing in those workshops and lectures, and I had a few more conversations with people from that conference. I don't think any of them realized that I was from a different conference, since I was as comfortable talking to them as with anyone else.
Third I discovered the reasons behind the first realization. The reason the important things happen in the halls is because the important People are in the halls. And they're in the halls because they can't afford time, energy or patience (the three most valuable resources) to sit through panels, lectures or workshops. Moreover, they have no need to, since most of the time they already know them, or at least have few, if any, barriers to approaching them and having a one-on-one conversations with them. The conversation format is more valuable than the mass, centralized formats to them, because it is more flexible, because it can be directed in a variety of directions beneficial to all parties, which gets harder as the parties get more numerous, and because in a large group you want the majority of people to take something away with them. If everyone should take something away with them, you're working with the lowest common denominator, because it's easiest. Everyone has a different level of understanding for each piece of information provided. The larger the group, the more likely it is that someone won't understand whatever it is being presented at any given time. One person doesn't understand, and so needs the pace slowed down. Once they're back understanding, someone else will likely need the pace slowed because they don't understand whatever it is that's being presented now. The safest, easiest, most intuitive way of dealing with this is to play to the lowest common (or lowest expected) denominator at every turn. In a personal conversation, you can get feedback from your discussion partners. You can start at the high end, and if they don't understand they'll let you know and then you slow down the pace. It's more productive to have a personal conversation.

There are a few events and conversations that stand out to me.
One happened in a panel. It stands out for a couple reasons. First, it was a particularly irksome comment from a panelist. Second was my reaction, which was more in keeping with my personality online than with my personality face to face.
The comment was something like this: "The youth must take the initiative to change the world." On a normal day, I might have let it go. But I was already bored and annoyed. Which is probably why I reacted by commenting, politely, that it wasn't just the kids who needed to take the initiative, it was kids and adults together. By which I meant that it was the adults who had the responsibility; first of all for screwing up the world, so they should be the ones to fix it if anyone; and secondly for teaching us, for giving us mental tools to fix the world with. By implication, that meant that adults were not doing their job as adults. I think that was the first time I had a lot of fun stirring the pot Not online. That same panel discussion, other youth voiced their own disgruntlement, with the conference, with the adults, with Any of the panelists in Any of the discussion (none of whom were youth except EDC's gang, and who all liked to hear themselves talk), and with the world at large. We were all fed up with the charade.
Another event was a conversation I had with Vivian, Amal and another delegate of EDC. It eventually turned to story telling and how useful and productive it is, generally, in being understood. Thirty seconds later, someone starts telling a story and apologizes for it. Take what moral from this you will.

The last event I will talk about is what ties into feeling old, though not neatly. From the EDC group, I knew Joyce and Vivian from the symposium in Costa Rica. There was a third EDC delegate with them, and I'm not sure if she would mind me using her name, so I will not. She approached me during the conference and asked that I review a survey she was working on.
So she gives me the survey, and it's like a textbook. I may be embellishing but it was certainly hefty. It was a Book of scale choice questions; participants are asked to rank how true a statement is to them, usually from "Not at All True" to "Absolutely True" or some such. Our conversation about this survey took place over in a vacant office I found at the conference center, I was on Skype while she was on her phone. I think I told her from the start that I shouldn't be used as the voice of all students, since I couldn't really be counted as a normal student.
At one point it cam to me telling her that if I were in a class and given this monster of a packet, I wouldn't do it. I was meek enough in school that I might have done enough of it to make it seem like I'd done the whole thing (since I find it highly unlikely that anyone would actually Tell us that we had the option of not doing it), but now, if I were in a class, which is highly unlikely in the first place, and given this thing, I would refuse point-blank to fill it out.
I tried to explain why, but I didn't do a very good job of it. I made some connections between the survey and standardized tests, which was meaningful, but not what I meant. What I meant, and later found the words to say it, was this;
There is the stereotype Just Kids. "What do they know? They're just kids." "Their opinion doesn't matter, they're just kids."
There is a corresponding stereotype about adults, but if a kid expresses it they'll be said to be talking back and probably punished for it. That stereotype is that adults are full of shit. It isn't usually expressed outright. This is brought into being by adults never explaining what they're doing or why. We grow up with this lack of useful information, and so when we grow older we perpetuate it. In school, why do we take those classes that we dislike? I still haven't found a reason, which is why I'm not in school.
If you were to give a student this huge survey, it has no meaning. You might even tell them what the purpose of the study is. It Still Has No Meaning. It has no meaning because the student won't see the purpose of it, or because they don't think that purpose will affect them, or they won't Believe that your reasons are valid, or for any number of mistrustful, and also Valid, reasons.
I had this issue during Power Users. "The purpose of this study is to see how young Power Users think, so that maybe we can revamp schools." or whatever the hell it was. BULL. SHIT.
Students aren't going to trust what you say off the bat, because they have no reason to, and plenty of reason not to. How many times have they been told that they'll use the algebra they learn in class? How many times have they been told that they're being prepared for the Real World (which is such clear bullshit because school should at least Imitate the Real World if it's going to prepare anyone for it)? Kids are not stupid. We're not idiotic animals to be penned up together to keep us from getting underfoot while we're being tamed. The general feeling is "I'll believe it when I see it." Which is absolutely valid.
So when you tell them that this is going to help them, why should they believe you? In all probability, by the time the research from your project comes into play, they won't be in school anymore. On top of that, these are personal questions. You're trying to get inside their minds through this survey, which is insulting because a mind can't be analyzed by a simple survey. Why should students want to take this ridiculously long survey of intrusive questions, which resembles something they can't possibly like, for a research project that they doubt the integrity of? It doesn't make sense.
That is my current take on her survey, but I'm not sure that's actually what she wanted from me. It seemed to me that she felt intuitively that there was something wrong with this but didn't have words to voice it. I'm not sure I gave her any. But she was also interested in my being a non-traditional student and seemed to want me to reveal how we could be found. The thing is, we can't really. We each have different interests, and so we don't usually know each other. The only conceivable system for finding us would be through the friends we had before we broke out from the system. Those friends are often also hard to find, since they also are likely to be non-traditional students, and once daily contact is broken and personal interests are pursued, how likely is it that they remain close? That would be an interesting question to look into... How to find non-traditional students.
Anyway, she seemed to be looking for ammo, and I'm not sure I performed well in that. I didn't give her a whole lot of sound-bites. She also asked me to pass this around and ask for comments from "my peers" which she, I believe intentionally, left up to me to define. And I did. I sent her an email linking to the forums I asked the question on, since those are "my peers". I got plenty of response from "my peers", but none from her.
I'd like to know how her research is going.

(Continued on 8/16)
There were some interesting happenings not through the conference but in Geneva.
First I got into Geneva, but my luggage didn't. I got off the plane, filed for my missing luggage, figured out how to work the phone that was forwarding my calls (for an ugly amount that I argued was unnecessary since I had Skype), and called my pickup from the hotel. I got to the hotel and took a twenty minute nap. Then I got up and went for a walk.
Now, I hadn't kept track of how long I'd been traveling, but on the way back I kept track and that was about 24hours of being on planes and in airports. I imagine the trip there was comparable. How I was walking after a 20 minute nap, I don't know. Was it a good Idea for me to go for a walk, alone, in a city that I didn't know, when I was that tired? Not at all. I got lost and wandered around for about three hours.
The problem was several things combined. Sleep deprivation being one of them. In Santa Fe, the mountains are north, north east of the city. So if you're going uphill, you're probably going north. The sun usually shines in Santa Fe too, so if you find yourself in an arroyo or some such, you can find your way by the sun. On the south side of the lake in Geneva, where I was, north is down, it was overcast, and there were so many tall buildings in the way that I probably wouldn't have been able to see the sun anyway. I started out knowing which way I was going for the first ten minutes. The ten minutes in which I figured out how to get to the conference center from my hotel. After that I got confused.
The other issue was that it was lower altitude with richer air than I was used to. I didn't get physically tired as easily, and so I had little sense of time. It was only when the sun peaked out and looked like it was getting to be late afternoon that I realized how long I'd been out, and then thought about how far I could have gotten in that time at Home, which would still be less than the distance I could have gone in Geneva, because of the low altitude. I eventually resorted to being a tourist. I went downhill until I found the lake, and worked from a map and tourist signs from there, and found my way back within what I think was 20 minutes but could just as easily have been as much as an hour.

There was one inter-cultural Joke that I remember and will end on. I was sitting on a bus (I don't remember where I was going...), and there were a few people surveying the bus riders. About what, I have no idea.
They make their way from the back. They they talk to the people sitting across from me, and then they ask me something and I shrug apologetically saying "I only speak English." They repeat it to each other sympathetically "Only speak English..." and move on to the guy sitting next to me who shakes his head and says "Only speak English." They move on down the bus, and when they're out of earshot I lean in and ask him "Do you really speak English?"
He looks abashed, shakes his head and says in French (or I presume he says in French) "I don't speak English." We and the people across from us laugh.