Author Archives: Candidasa dasa, UK

K-CAP day 5: aftermath
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Today, over breakfast, I was at a table with various high-powered researchers. One of them has been up all night writing an “emergency paper” for the boss of a friend. The topic of schmoozing came up.

They enlightened me that it is very important to complement even the most senior speaker on their keynote presentation. The may seem like they are all-powerful and supremely intelligent, but, in reality, they are just as insecure as everyone else about whether they did a good job and people liked their talk. The trick is to boost their ego, become their friend and get them to help you out.

Research is mostly funded by various government agencies (EPSRC and JISC in the UK and DARPA and NASA in the US). At big conferences there are invite-only “brainstorming” sessions where the agency??(TM)s officers discuss with the researchers what the next big research grant should focus on. This is a chance for the University professors to argue that their line of research is best and should be funded (even if it isn??(TM)t ??¦ in fact: especially if it isn??(TM)t).

The key in these brainstorming sessions is to injecting one’s ideas into as many other peoples??(TM) mind as possible before these meetings. It??(TM)s a horrible thing to do and one may have to have a shower afterwards to wash off the slime, but the more people argue one??(TM)s case, the better the chance of getting the money.

However, in the end, all this is somewhat of a pretense. The actual decision is made in the pub after the session. The grant officers will give the contract to their friends. Their friends are their drinking buddies. The really successful researchers are those that manipulate the social scene to make everyone their friend. For example, people like Wendy Hall and Nigel Shadbolt are primarily famous not because they are brilliant researchers (though, of course, that must also be there), but because they knows everyone and everyone knows them.

What, if you don’t drink? Well, better start soon.

It works the same in most industries. Film producers for example spend most of their time in the five year production cycle of a film going to cocktail parties meeting the potential funders, potential actors and potential directors. They negotiate the production crew over a few drinks. Sometimes a key member will pull out of the agreement and they need to go to more parties to recruit new staff.

Ministers in the Greek government spend most of their time at the ministry drinking coffee with one another. The do this because they need to know that they can pick up the phone, talk to a friend, ask for a report and get it delivered to them next morning.

In the UK and USA beer replaces coffee. Each country has its own style.

When one then finally has the grant money one often can’t spend it fast enough. If one doesn’t spend all of the money one has been granted, then one obviously didn’t need it in the first place, so one will get less next time. Some projects therefore need to get very creative in how they can burn money. They will, for example, finance trips overseas for the entire research group. Even then, sometimes one simply cannot spend enough of the government grant money. In such cases one needs to extend the grant due to “staffing issues”. In other words, in order to fudge the records one, once again, needs to be in cahoots with the right people.