So imagine a sword. Your favourite one. Glamdring, perhaps, or The Green Destiny, or whatever you called your favourite character's +5 Holy Avenger back in those D&D days that you hope no-one knows about. Nice and useful tool, right? Now imagine that someone took off the handle of this sword, and sharpened up that newly exposed tongue of metal good and sharp like the other end. Still a useful tool, but it can bite back, because you've got to hold it by a sharp end too. Ok, I need a nice phrase for what I just described so that I can invent a new metaphor for what it is like being the departmental colloquium organizer. This is because the phrase "double-edged sword" just does not cut it, if you follow my meaning. What am I babbling about? Well, today is supposed to be a hide and get some research done day, and again the first half has been almost totally taken up so far with next week's colloquium arrangements. The point of the metaphor is that in principle it is supposed to work like this: You're given a budget, and you're entrusted with an important role: Looking after the weekly general physics talks that the department offers to all its members. Working with your colleagues' eager suggestions, you assemble a series of great speakers and topics, and you invite these people - they come - and everybody goes back to their labs and offices humming away having had some fun learning about what sort of physics is going on in the world. Well actually, it does work a bit like this, which is why I agreed to do it. In my opinion it is one of the single most important tasks in any department because it is often the one regular event where the entire department comes out and sits together in the name of physics and does something together. Frankly, our departmental holiday parties and other ocassional social gatherings here largely suck. (I think this is because all but a few faculty hate staying on campus beyond about 6:30pm if it is not to do with actual work, and so attendance and motivation is rather poor for after hours events...[strike]that and the not having alcohol because of the youth element.[/strike]) So if you have an event during the afternoon with the dual purpose of social lubrication and physics you have a better chance of encouraging conversation and social interaction between individuals and groups that are commonly found in very different buildings. Furthermore, since colleagues mostly only give vague suggestions, you get the main say in shaping the programme yourself, bringing in really interesting and fun speakers, as opposed to having talk after talk about the details of [strike]vacuum pumps[/strike] some particular, more narrowly focused area; details that are no doubt interesting to some, but not to most. Then, as a bonus treat, you undergo the hardship of having to treat the speakers as the department's "thank you" (no fancy honorarium to be had here), by touring through your list of favourite gourmet restaurants around the city. So all of the above it the usual sharp pointy end of the sword: choice, control, doing a valuable job, tasty food, wine and cocktails at the end of the day as a reward. But, remember the other sharp pointy end that bites back? Well it starts with the fact that we don't have the kind of budget that we should (Something I want to work on with a bit of fund-raising: I feel a Physics department in a major university should have a high profile series of campus events...bringing fundamental science to the rest of the university community on a regular basis). So away goes the weekly goodies at the end of the day. Admittedly, for some of the speakers I still do that, as it is important to thank them by giving them a good time, and furthermore sometimes the most interesting and valuable conversation that happens amongst the faculty, guest (and sometimes students) in such an event is at this end of the day meal. The problem is then that while I'd like to tour the whole city of restaurants that we have, most of my colleagues want to go to a restaurant that's close to USC so that they can dash off home as quickly as possible after. Luckily, there are some good ones in the downtown area (close to campus), but this means I'll have to continue to visit all those excellent ones in MidCity, West Hollywood, Venice and Santa Monica, etc., at my own expense. The next aspect of the other pointy end of the sword is that it is just so time-consuming. It is essentially like organizing a miniconference every week. Some of this is my fault. (I can't do things by halves, I have to do things in doubles, or I just don't like doing it.) This is because you have to spend the days leading up to it making sure that the advertising is adequate for the type of speaker and topic that is coming. We have a regular posting in the usual places, and some posters up around the department. Not surprisingly, about 25-30 people show up if you're lucky. That's just wrong, and embarrassing. In several cases, the topic is of interest to some of our colleagues in engineering, or biology or chemistry. So in those weeks, one has to make sure that special extra advertising is put on. Then there's meetings. The speaker comes for the day, or half a day if they're local to the region, and we're paying with actual folding money (and/or good food; see above) for them to come, and so we should make sure that they get a chance to have one-on-one meetings with everybody who wants to (as time permits). So you first email everybody you can think of about the event. Then you try to get from your colleagues some time windows when they can meet with the speaker. You can end up exchanging hundreds of emails this way in a short time, until you've built a schedule. It is particularly bad when it is one of the larger, more campus-wide events which in my wisdom I try to do, since this can involve several other departments. I might even make an extra more "fun" poster to bring in the odd random punter from the general campus community. (The "got nano?" one this week riffs on my earlier "got energy?" reply to the "got milk?" campain. See earlier post.)
So this is what I was doing this morning. Our speaker is Michael Roukes from Caltech, and he's talking about Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in systems Biology and possible applications to medicine. (Abstract here.) You can imagine how many different types of physicist, chemist, biologist, biomedical engineer, clinical researcher, etc, might be interested in this topic. I want them to come. And that's before I get to all the different flavours of Dean and other senior administrator that might be interested too, as a result of our new Provost Max Nikias, anouncing that Nano-Bio is one of our focus areas for research (and hence funding and new faculty positions) in the coming years. Last week I was in the same position. I invited Nathan Lewis from Caltech to come and tell us about The Scientific Challenges for Sustainable Energy Policy. Again, hugely interdisciplinary and of great interest at the highest levels too, given how it ties together so many departments and schools on campus. I upgraded the whole thing to a campus event which meant extra emails, extra food (raided Trader Joes for excellent good value cookies, to save our budget), and extra stress. I spoke about the organisational aspects of that in an earlier post, and I'll talk about the content of his talk in a short while, as it was excellent, and everyone was buzzed! Which sort of makes this all worth it. That and getting to try out Cafe Pinot afterwards, chatting with some Department heads from Chemical, and Material Science Engineering, and our Dean of Research, Michael Quick (about whom I've blogged not so long ago), and trying out an excellent dish of duck, with interesting conversation and an affordable wine... a combination which was quite agreeable. -cvj
