Conferences seem to be a part of my life no matter what I'm involved with. Except for the reminder that it can be hard to keep the energy up when I sit through too many presentations in a row, I love the opportunity to learn and to interact with people who have varied interests in and relationships with the topic at hand.
The first professional conference I attended was when I was in graduate school in the mid-1980s. I was studying political science and writing a thesis on how Utah prosecuting attorneys could go about implementing a recent statute that would allow children in abuse cases to testify via videotape or closed-circuit television. The purpose of the law was to protect children in a justice system that is designed for adults. It's one thing to pass a law; it's a whole other thing to figure out the policy for implementing it, especially when it walked a precarious constitutional line in relation to the rights of the accused to be faced by their accusers.
During that time, academics and professionals in many fields were grappling with the newly emerging range and scope of child abuse issues. So when the opportunity arose to hop in my car and drive to Reno to hear some of the most prominent voices speak in person and engage in immediate conversation with one another, I couldn't pass it up. My research, my writing, and my understanding of real-world problem solving took on a whole new dimension after that.
Epilogue: The US Supreme Court handed down a decision in an unrelated case shortly after I defended and passed my thesis that essentially nullified the Utah statute before any prosecutors took the chance to test it. Was my work wasted? Not in my mind. What I learned was priceless.
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