Learning to Love Poor Success Rates, and the Future of European Funding

EARMA: awash with conference coffee

Conferences are strange beasts. They're slightly unreal. It might be all that conference coffee, and having large, formal meals at times when you're not used to having large, formal meals. It might be all the fractured conversations you have, or the sense of bewilderment as you try and find the Wellington Suite for the fourth parallel session of the day.

At the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators (EARMA) conference in Lulea this week the unreality was compounded by the fact that the sun never really sank below the horizon. And, whilst most of the speakers (myself included) stuck squarely to the script, some seemed to have been affected by the parallel reality of sub-Arctic Sweden.