the conference i wasn't invited to

Friday and today have been totally crazy. I dropped off Liam at preschool yesterday and then tried to study for quant in the forum. Close to 10am, I got a call from Chris. He had arrived at this Shr. Ctr conference we were both attending and wanted to make sure he was in the right place since I wasn't there yet.

"Everyone's wearing a suit and is over 60," he tells me, "I'm not sure if I'm in the right place."

It was a conference focusing on the issues in my two classes - journalism in the face of current trends....not sure of the title. But he was right. When I walked in, there was a sea of white (hair) and blue (suits). I didn't see any other students, though it was nice to have JC sit next to me.

When the first speaker came on, he had a remote mike and said, "Can everyone hear me in the back?" "Oh," whispered Chris to me, "This sounds like a consultant."

Indeed.

For the next hour, he laid out his HBS sanctioned consulting firm for newspapers to get them to see that they don't have "readers" but "consumers" and they don't have "advertisers" but "businesses." You can imagine the rest of the dog and pony show. I turned to Chris and asked him, "Don't all of these people know this already?"

These people, the folks in the room, were some of the biggest heavy hitters in journalism - from all of the big outlets, as well as a academics I spotted.

After Chris had covered the economics of the newspaper industry, he told me briefly, that "no" a lot of them don't know about it. Frightening.

We then continued to whisper to each other about how to plan the rest of the day and week-end, in terms of the conference and the kids. Both kids needed to be picked up at noon - I found out there was a luncheon - which I thought would be good for Chris to go to and schmooze - but, now, students weren't invited to that. Only "invited" guests.

But Chris actually said, that he was considering staying or going to other parts of the conference, but he was worried about not spending time with the kids. Huh? What?

So I left first to go meet Liam at music assembly - yahoo. We then met up at Darwin's for lunch, then I went back to school to study, attend another review session and then back to the conference. Phew!

I walked into the last session - on new media - it was a lively discussion - with a. huffngtn as one of the panel members - she made some comment about the choice not having to be between new or old media, in terms of the best journalism - like having to be between ginger and maryanne - "Let's have a threeway."

And fortunately, Rebecca (last name?) from an intersting group called glblvission or something like that (she used to be a cnn reporter or producer who had gotten that cnn memo about not covering afghan casualties b/c it would disturb the american public - but she kept pushing the stories - because, among many reasons - the deaths were feuling al quiada) - anyway, i'm glad she finally talked about the elephant in the room - full of wealthy, educated, mostly white men of journalistic power who were worried about losing their power.

Feeling nervous about my quant exam on Tuesday, I wanted to spend the next hour or so studying before going to Tvl's for dinner, but, it felt so great to talk with friends about the conference - and even quant! - and, heck, it was quorum call, so I had a beer - it felt very decadent and I felt guilty about Chris having a rough day with the kids.

Hung out with Omr and Ksg. Omr had spoken in quant class on Th - a class focused on Iraqui civilian casualities - very coincidental that the study was just released a few days before - surprising to me, he validated all of it and talked about how great things were overall, especially in terms of health care before the invasion - b/c he's from a privilged class? But it's so sad b/c he's lost so many of his family and friends. It was such a perfect class as we were discussing how to design a good statistical study.

Funny, though, trying to decide what schmoozing meant to both omr and ksng -especially the latter, who is an ultimate schmoozer - in a very sweet Thai way.

Then, Chris picked me up and we went over to Tvl's for dinner - so sweet that they invited us. Liam got along famously with his son and it was nice to connect with another mom. Strange, though, to hear so soon after arriving about the e-mail about the Israeili military dude who was almost arrested in Britain. Tvl and I are totally different sides of the fence, politically - since he served in the army - though he has such a progressive streak.

Then chris dropped us off at home. I played firefighter with liam. It was really fun to start to put together his costume, but I was so exhausted. I almost fell asleep on the couch while reading a book to him. I decided it would be better to sleep than to try and study. But I woke up super early, instead, and still felt tired.

Went back to the conference/studying dance...-

Gosh, I feel like I don't talk enough about the kids in all of this...I've been having a blast playing face games with Kalian - she's so cute - and I really do worry about Liam and his stuttering/w sounds and accidents lately....