Early Tuesday I’m off to the Bay Area, where I’ll be attending two conferences back-to-back: Privacy Law Scholars 2011 and Law & Society 2011.
As I concentrate more and more on thinking and writing about privacy issues, Privacy Law Scholars has become the most important conference in the season. The papers tend to be excellent, and the people running it have found a great conference formula: paper presentations are limited to 10 minutes — by the discussant, with a brief reply by the author. Attendees are expected to, and do, read the papers. Discussions are great. The only problem is that there are multiple tracks, and I want to be three places at once. I’m discussing an important new paper by Colin Bennett, one of the deans of privacy studies.
Law & Society is a great big barn of an event. It seems as if half the legal academy is there. There are an enormous number of papers in parallel, and it can be so overwhelming that I sometimes just give in to the temptation to meet people in the hallways and pick their brains. I’m moderating a panel on Cutting Edge Issues in Privacy Law — which they’ve put at 8:15 am on a Sunday morning. At that hour, I just hope the audience outnumbers the panel.
Maybe I’ll see you at one of these events?
