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Wiscon or Society of Behavioral Medicine?
Michael and I talked a little bit about going to Wiscon tonight. We are still thinking.
The big conference in my field is being held in Montreal this year, at the end of April. I would like to go, and if I go, my grant will pay for my plane ticket and hotel room and other expenses. The rest of the family would come along too, at our personal expense.
I don't think it makes economic or practical sense to do two family trips by airplane in two months, with a very young baby.
An issue with Montreal is that, traveling by air, we would all have to have passports. Even the Niblet, who should be about ten weeks old at the time. Which would mean trying to get usable passport pictures for a newborn (the rules about what constitutes an acceptable photo are stringent), and scrambling to get the official birth certificate from the state and the passport application pushed through. That sounds complicated.
Once in Montreal, the Niblet would probably attend SBM with me, nursing and sleeping in the sling, while Michael and Alex hung out with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
papersky. We could all hang out with papersky in the evenings. If I were scheduled to give a talk (hopefully I would be, about my new research), Michael would take the Niblet while I was speaking. I would be able to network.
If we go to Wiscon, we wouldn't need passports. More of our friends would be there. The Niblet would be a month older, and I seem to recall that there can be a big sanity difference between a 10-week-old and a 14-week-old. We'd have to pay for everything - no billing the grant - and obviously, there would be no professional advantages. It would probably be a hell of a lot of fun.
I am tentatively leaning towards making a Wiscon hotel reservation now, just in case, and making the final decision about where to go after I find out if SBM would want me to give a talk, or not. If they just want me to present my research as a poster, it would have a lot less appeal.
Questions about Wiscon:
1. Are you going?
2. If we wait to buy memberships until January, are they likely to be sold out?
3. How hard is it to sell or transfer memberships in the late winter or early spring?
4. Is it at all possible to arrange for adjoining hotel rooms in case, say, you want to share after-the-kids-are-asleep monitoring duty with another family?
5. If (4) is possible, would you be interested?
6. Would you look askance at someone who brought a sleeping baby in a sling to a room party?
Questions about Montreal:
7. Has anyone here ever gotten a passport for an infant? How hard was it to arrange?
8. Is it insane to think about bringing an infant to a professional conference? I've seen other people do it, but I don't know how good of a conference experience they had. Obviously I wouldn't let the Niblet cry in a lecture room, or anything.
Questions about both:
9. Is it insane to think about traveling 600-1000 miles with a preschooler and a small infant and all staying together in one hotel room?
The big conference in my field is being held in Montreal this year, at the end of April. I would like to go, and if I go, my grant will pay for my plane ticket and hotel room and other expenses. The rest of the family would come along too, at our personal expense.
I don't think it makes economic or practical sense to do two family trips by airplane in two months, with a very young baby.
An issue with Montreal is that, traveling by air, we would all have to have passports. Even the Niblet, who should be about ten weeks old at the time. Which would mean trying to get usable passport pictures for a newborn (the rules about what constitutes an acceptable photo are stringent), and scrambling to get the official birth certificate from the state and the passport application pushed through. That sounds complicated.
Once in Montreal, the Niblet would probably attend SBM with me, nursing and sleeping in the sling, while Michael and Alex hung out with
papersky. We could all hang out with papersky in the evenings. If I were scheduled to give a talk (hopefully I would be, about my new research), Michael would take the Niblet while I was speaking. I would be able to network.If we go to Wiscon, we wouldn't need passports. More of our friends would be there. The Niblet would be a month older, and I seem to recall that there can be a big sanity difference between a 10-week-old and a 14-week-old. We'd have to pay for everything - no billing the grant - and obviously, there would be no professional advantages. It would probably be a hell of a lot of fun.
I am tentatively leaning towards making a Wiscon hotel reservation now, just in case, and making the final decision about where to go after I find out if SBM would want me to give a talk, or not. If they just want me to present my research as a poster, it would have a lot less appeal.
Questions about Wiscon:
1. Are you going?
2. If we wait to buy memberships until January, are they likely to be sold out?
3. How hard is it to sell or transfer memberships in the late winter or early spring?
4. Is it at all possible to arrange for adjoining hotel rooms in case, say, you want to share after-the-kids-are-asleep monitoring duty with another family?
5. If (4) is possible, would you be interested?
6. Would you look askance at someone who brought a sleeping baby in a sling to a room party?
Questions about Montreal:
7. Has anyone here ever gotten a passport for an infant? How hard was it to arrange?
8. Is it insane to think about bringing an infant to a professional conference? I've seen other people do it, but I don't know how good of a conference experience they had. Obviously I wouldn't let the Niblet cry in a lecture room, or anything.
Questions about both:
9. Is it insane to think about traveling 600-1000 miles with a preschooler and a small infant and all staying together in one hotel room?
no subject
2-3. I'm not sure of the actual membership numbers right now; but even last year, we weren't sold out in January. Also, there's a fair amount of turnover, in terms of people who figure out they can't go and then they either transfer their memberships to friends, or get refunds from the con and those memberships go to people on the waiting list. betsy might know more than me about how full childcare is at this point.
4. Not sure; but I think people do manage to.
5. I generally roomshare with 3 people, with some overlap each year, but no kids. So, n/a.
6. My friend Jen
I'm *not* sure what the current state of the hotel is, in terms of the room block being "sold out"; definitely call instead of using the website. I know there's been a certain amount of people reserving more rooms than they themselves need, just in case, so there will certainly be a brisk business in hotel room transfers closer to the con. It might be the case that you make a reservation at rack rate, and can get someone's block rate reservation later. We're still working out kinks with the new hotel management (as of last year) in terms of things like room block waiting lists.
...
9. I know people who do this for WisCon every year, and don't think it's insane. But I don't have any direct experience.