The big week arrived and everything was a bit nerve wracking.I had given my Consciousness forum public talk on the Wednesday before the conference and it had gone quite well but not fabulously. The timing of that turned out to be excellent since I altered my concurrent presentation based on some of the comments and feedback that I received.
The conference went incredibly well. On the first day I was attending pre-conference workshops on quantum effects in brains and psychiatric dis-orders of self-perception, both of which were very interesting and also making some new friends.
Day 2: I co-ran a pre-conference workshop on Panpsychism (the meta-theory which states that everything in existence either has a mind or mind-like properties.) The workshop was entitled 'Panpsychism: A spectrum of views' and that is definitely what it was. I was there to give a Philosophical defense of my sponsor Stuart Hameroff's theory of consciousness and it went very well. The conference officially opened in the afternoon with a short introduction from Stuart Hameroff, which included a stop-frame animation of one of the consciousness songs which he commissioned the band to write (which you can watch on you tube here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL_07TQvhsQ) By getting Anastasia and myself to stand up afterwards Stu ensured that we both had very public profiles at the conference.
Day 3: 'Judgement Day!' My first presentation of my work at a (probably 'the') big international
conference in my field. I was presenting last thing on the day, starting at 6pm, so I had the whole day to stress about it. As it turned out I didn't need to be worried about my presentation only the technology involved in presenting it. For some reason the little connector needed to plug my new Macbook into the projector which had taken 2 minutes to find on Day 2 took 2 1/2 hours to find on Day 3 leaving me in a panic and only actually ready to present with about 5 minutes to spare. The actual talk went very well. I have a recording of it for anyone who wants to listen (yawn). After my talk I was surrounded by a group of new people wanting to thank me for it and was invited out to dinner with 4 of them (which was bought for me.) Obviously I took the fact that I had exercised all of my academic responsibilities for the week as an excuse to drink for the first time (and probably overdid it a little.) After dinner (and slightly tipsy) I was interviewed for a documentary about Panpsychism which should be coming out at the end of 2008.
Day 4: From this point I could just enjoy learning and discussing and just have fun at the conference. Thursday was a light day with the afternoon spent out at the Tucson Desert Museum with cocktails and dinner.
Day 5: More consciousness stuff in the day-time and in the evening the first of the band's live performances. The open mic and poetry slam was great fun. We opened the show with our three consciousness songs performing as our alter egos 'The Brains'. During the open mic bit I also sang a solo acoustic song about a Philosophical thought experiment which went down very well. At the end of the poetry slam is the 'Zombie Blues' an open mic blues fest which we backed up as the band, lots of fun.
Day 6: Talks continued until mid-afternoon when the formal part of the conference ended. I then went out to a local natural beauty spot Gates Pass to watch the sunset and have a beer with some of my new friends.In the evening was the End of Consciousness party at which the band played as ourselves.
It was a great night, lots of very positive feedback about the band and we all had a terribly enjoyable time (the band were getting free Margaritas)
