‘There's too much f**king perspective now’:

Working - with friend. Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

I wrote this article for the Arma magazine, The Protagonist, in March, at the beginning of the lockdown. Three months on and the shock of adjustment has softened somewhat, but the advice still stands. The Canadian government's wrote that you're not 'working from home', but rather 'at home, during a crisis, trying to work'. It's a subtle but important difference, and one I try to convey in this piece. 

Six Tips on Working from Home - and one of them is actually good

Wigs: a necessity
(Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash)

Like Alice in Wonderland, it feels as if, in the past two weeks, we’ve tumbled into a new world where none of the old rules apply. Gone is the commute, the weekend shopping, and the easy access to toilet rolls. Gone are the crowds, the sport, and the traffic jams. So it’s not all bad.

It’s bewildering, and nowhere more so than in the working environment. Most of us are working from home now, but what does that mean, and how can we do it effectively? Newspapers, blogs and broadcasters have all rushed to offer advice. Here, we summarise the common hints and tips that have emerged.

How to Write an Email

Pencils. But at least it's not a stock image
of someone at a computer, right? (Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash)

We’ve all received them: long, rambling emails with a detailed preamble that would make Tolstoy blush, a vaguely officious tone and the main question buried deep in the 32nd paragraph.

Worse still, we’ve all written them. So how do we stop doing it, and get people to read our messages and respond to them?

Blog Roll

Passion - or frustration - led us here.
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

I started writing my blog, Research Fundermentals, a decade ago. I wanted a way to share information, notes and thoughts across the University of Kent, but also to reach out to other research managers and administrators. In effect, I wanted to ask, ‘is it just me, or…?’

I was inspired by the University of Lincoln’s blog, which is a great example of how to use an online platform effectively to communicate with the wider academic community.

Since then I’ve discovered a whole host of wonderful online resources that help me in my work but, just as importantly, make me realise I’m not alone.

The fine art of acromancy

Acro-monious

A sure sign of having gone native in any profession is when you start talking in acronyms. ‘Yeah, I’ve been helping a PI on a GCRF application,’ you might casually explain to colleagues round the water cooler,  ‘but it turns out they’re not paying fEC. Worse still, it breaks all GDPR requirements, and it’s not even ODA-compliant! Nightmare!’
Everyone nods in sympathy. Some make a mental note to avoid either GCRF or water coolers in the future. Possibly both. Others, however, go back to their desks and feverishly Google the terms. Federal Election Commission? Are they responsible for the Geocentric Celestial Reference Frame? If so, how the hell did the Oregon Department of Agriculture get involved? And isn’t π pronounced pi rather than PI?

'The Triumphant Demi-God'

A research administrator in action (photo: Tilemahos Efthimiadis, CC BY 2.0)

ARMA HQ. Hamish MacHamish is flicking through proofs of the Association's newsletter, 'Newsletter of the Association of Research Managers and Administrators'.

H MacH: Stephanie! Stephanie!
Stephanie MacBales (for it is she): Yes Hamish?
H MacH: I've been reading the new newsletter.
S MacB: Isn't it wonderful! Some excellent articles this term.
H MacH: Yes, yes. Very good. The only trouble is, well, the name.
S MacB: What's wrong with it? It says exactly what it is: 'Newsletter of the Association of Research Managers and Administrators'.
H MacH: Well there's no denying that.
S MacB: What more do you want?
H MacH: Well we're a thrusting new professional organisation now. We've got guiding principles. We've got a Strategic Plan and Implementation Framework. It's got five key pillars. Not four, not six. Five. Which I believe is just the right number. We need a thrusting new title to reflect that!

The Birdman of ARMA

On the opening day of the annual ARMA Conference, it seemed only fitting to honour one of ARMA's finest: Kent's former Director of Research Services, and now LSE's Director of the Research Division, Michael Keaton.

And I know what you're all thinking: what is a Hollywood superstar doing in the world of research management? But you're asking the wrong question. Really, the salient point here is why aren't there more Hollywood superstars battering on the ARMA doors, wanting to be let in?

Well, just because you don't hear them doesn't mean they're not there. I understand that the only reason that Eddie Redmayne took the Theory of Everything gig was to get near to the privileged ground of the Cambridge Research Operations Office. Similar story with Russell Crowe, A Beautiful Mind and Princeton Office of Research and Project Administration.

Social Media, Networks and Impact

A couple of years ago Nadine Muller, a cultural historian and English literature researcher at Liverpool John Moores University, visited the University of Kent to talk about how she used social media in her work. One thing that stood out was how much of her efforts were based around creating a virtual community.

Muller studies the cultural understanding of widowhood. By engaging with widows’ groups on Twitter, she has gained access to a more personal well of experience. She has also connected with people beyond academia who might benefit from or be interested in her research, including policymakers, teachers and informed lay people.

Research, especially in the humanities and some areas of the social sciences, can be solitary work. Social media, Muller said, allowed her to discuss her work and interact with people without leaving her desk. It also gave her a chance to think aloud, and to run a rough draft of a paper or a research project past people before taking it further.

The same goes for those of us who support academics. At the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators (Earma) Conference this year, I am linking up with colleagues from the universities of Ghent and Coventry, and University College Dublin, to deliver a session on using social media. 

Lighting a Candle

For most of June I've been travelling. I went up to Birmingham for the ARMA Conference, and then spent a week in Ghent with my team on an Erasmus+ exchange with colleagues at the University there. Finally, I was at the EARMA Conference in Lulea in Sweden last week.

And those three weeks brought home to me what a wonderful continent Europe is. From the vibrant, multi-cultural metropolis of Birmingham, to the cosmopolitan, relaxed and historic centre of Ghent, to the natural wonder of Lulea and the glittering archipelago of Stockholm: it is a diverse, open and inclusive continent, rich in history, but forward looking. 

Now you will have noticed that I included Birmingham as a natural part of Europe. Because to me it is: the UK is a part of Europe. Whilst the Channel is a geographic boundary, in all other ways the UK is strongly linked with the mainland. Economically, historically, culturally, environmentally, scientifically: on every level we are Europe. 

Which is why the Referendum result on Friday morning felt like a body blow. The messages, like telegrams, came in as I was driving back from Gatwick, from Stockholm, in the early hours, and the darkness that surrounded me felt foreboding.

And the Winner Is...'Sometimes Humorous'

'Tired and emotional'

Yes, I was as startled as I looked. At last week's ARMA Conference I was given the Piirus Technology and Innovation and Application Award for services to scurrilous blogging. Well, that wasn't quite the citation: instead it was for 'a well regarded, innovative and sometimes humorous blog'. I loved that final phrase: 'sometimes humorous'. It's deliciously (and I'm sure, unintentional) faint praise, and very much in keeping with the spirit of the blog.

The Rise of the Para-Academic

David Mills and a room of para-academics

The annual conference of the Association of Research Managers and Administrators took place in Brighton at the beginning of June. The event, and the association itself, has mushroomed in recent years. I’ve written before about this exponential growth. At the turn of the millennium ARMA’s forerunner, RAGnet, had 350 members; fifteen years later the Brighton conference, which was attended by only a fraction of ARMA's membership, had 750 delegates.

Part of me is proud of this, and part of me is shocked. Who are all these people? Seeing the delegate list was a moment of existential angst. Why do we exist? Who are we? What are we? The sociologist Laurie Taylor recently wrote in the Times Higher Education about this new ‘tribe’: "Managers and administrators who once had a mute background presence are now a noisy part of the daily life of every scholar. Their ranks continue to swell even though the UK is already one of the very few countries in the world where non-academic staff already outnumber academics."

Professionalising the Imposters

Last week, a colleague at another institution asked me to be their professional mentor. This came out of the blue and shocked me. I was flattered but bewildered, because I’ve always felt like a bit of fraud. What right do I have to mentor anyone?

Of course, such feelings are common in higher education. Ruth Barcan wrote in Times Higher Education earlier this year about this sense of fraudulence among academics. “Many of my colleagues (especially women) gave out subtle signs that they did not feel they were up to the job—almost as though they had been employed in error and would sooner or later be found out.”

Building an Internal Peer Review System

ARMA training: The Royal York Hotel

I took part in an ARMA event today. The focus was on how we, as research administrators and managers, could help to improve the quality of applications. I talked about the Grants Factory programme and Kent's internal peer review system. I shared the platform with Linsey Dickson from Heriot-Watt and Sue Coleman from Edinburgh, and it was interesting to hear what they did at their institutions, and how they compared and contrasted.

However, for me the most interesting part of the day was when the delegates talked amogst themselves about what an ideal peer review system would look like, and what challenges they would face in introducing one.  Common themes emerged:

• Timeliness is key. Applicants need feedback as early as possible. Of course, this isn't always possible: funder deadlines might be too tight, or applicants' collaborators may not give access to proposals early enough. Or (whisper it) the applicants themselves might just do things last minute.
• Feedback has to be useful. Well, durr. Perhaps I need to rephrase: reviewers have to be forced to give feedback which can be used. It's not enough to say, 'fine', or 'needs more work.' What applicants need is detailed feedback: what needs changing, and how?
• There needs to be more than one reviewer. This is something that Kent's system includes (our proposals have to be seen by a disciplinary reviewer and a funder reviewer), but some of the suggestions around the room included a user reviewer, or applicants having the opportunity to nominate their own, but having no guarantee that they'd be used. Additionally, reviewers should be compensated for their time, either through some form of (annual) fee, or perhaps factoring in their review work to the workload allocation model.
• There needs to be buy in. This is crucial: any new system has to have the backing of the PVC, the Heads of School and the Directors if Research. If it comes just from the centre, or is seen to be nothing more than a bureaucratic burden, then it's doomed. Moreover, or needs to be seen by the applicants as relevant and 'on their side'. Which brings me on to the final point:
• It should be Faculty/School based. This surprised me, and I don't think I agree with it. However, I understand the point being made: it needs to have ownership by the academics. If it's university wide there's a danger that this will be lost. This may be true at bigger universities, but I feel that at Kent the academic base is small enough for this not to be a problem. In addition, I tried to incorporate some of the school systems that already existed before our peer review system was launched. Nevertheless, we need to be alert to this as a potential issue.

And it's that kind of thing which makes involvement in these kinds of events worthwhile. Although I'm at the front pontificating and pretending I have all the answers, I've got as much to learn as anyone.

Hail the Phoenix

Joni Mitchell captured it perfectly: 'you don't know what you've got til it's gone'. The repercussions of the demise of the 1994 Group will, I think, be felt for some time yet. Whilst I took plenty of sideswipes at the 1994 Group in its last, doddery years - it was such an easy target, wasn't it? - the gap that it's left is a significant one for the UK's higher education sector.

In essence, we've now got a one brand market place. The Russell Group is the Acme Corporation. It is GUM. I've heard rumours that the Russell Group was not exactly passive in the self destruction of the 94 Group last summer. If this is true, it should be ashamed of the part in played. Whilst all is fair in love, war and the feuding of mission groups, having one citadel of research is not good for the long term health of the UK's research ecosystem.

I've made no bones about believing that increasing funding concentration is a Bad Thing, and  I hope that HEFCE sticks to its guns and 'fund excellent research in all its forms wherever it is found'. I think it would be incredibly detrimental to the whole sector if we moved to a situation where we had a divide between 'research' and 'teaching' universities. It would be harmful to the early careers of many academics, but also to the experience of students. Research should inform teaching, and teaching inform research. Having a strong research ecosystem across the sector is good for the UK as a whole.

However, to ensure its survival this ecosystem needs to be protected. Someone needs to fight the corner of the non-RG universities. Someone needs to speak for the majority. I think its disingenuous - or just plain stupid - to think that individual universities can speak as loudly or be heard as widely as a collective voice.  In the weeks that have followed the closure of the 1994 Group a number of possible candidates have been suggested, such as Universities UK (UUK), University Alliance, and even the Association of Research Managers and Administrators (ARMA). 

I don't think any of these are appropriate. Both UUK and ARMA should be looking after the interests of all in the sector, both non-RG and RG. The University Alliance has a particular mission in supporting and encouraging innovation within it member institutions. What we need instead is either to get rid of all mission groups and just have a single body speaking on behalf of the whole UK HE sector, or a body who can safeguard the smaller research intensive universities. The former is never going to happen; the RG brand has become too useful to its members. The latter isn't going to happen anytime soon either: too many fingers have been burnt, I think, in the sad end of the 1994 Group. The idea behind the Senate Group was a good one, a positive one, but it was ultimately scuppered by delays and self interest.

What we are left with, for the time being, is the RG, and a patchwork of regional groupings, from N8, M5, GW4 and Kent's own Eastern ARC. These do, I think, offer a solution for the moment. They allow the member universities to be more than the sum of their parts, and to spark interesting, interdisciplinary collaborations. They may even, in time, lead to a more 'federalised' sector. But there's always a danger that 'federalised' might lead to 'factionalised', with inter-regional scrapping and the building of walls between the groups.

Despite what some say, and despite the silly playground politics they engender, I think 'mission groups' do have their place. Or rather, in a world where some belong to a powerful mission group, the rest need to have the advocacy offered by one. Let's hope that a phoenix rises from the ashes of the 1994 Group. And soon.

A Decade of Development

Research Fortnight asked me to write an article to coincide with the 2013 ARMA Conference. I've reproduced it below (thanks to John Whitfield for this), but you can see the original on their website, here.

_________________

Spoiler: Neil Young doesn't feature
in this article. At all. 

Ten years ago, Iraq had just been invaded. Tony Blair was still in office. The iPhone hadn’t been invented. John Peel was still alive.

Ten years ago, I started working as a research funding officer at the University of Kent in Canterbury. University research offices up to then had essentially been branches of finance: they acted as accountants, costing applications and managing awards. Anything else—an occasional visit from a funder, a termly newsletter—was an add-on.

The introduction of a research development service was intended to provide more proactive support to researchers at the university. We could do whatever we thought necessary to help staff improve the quality and quantity of applications. Here was a service that aimed to change the role of university administrators: to have them stand beside academics, take them by the hand and lead them through the funding maze.

In the decade since, research development has become embedded in higher education, transforming the relationship between academics and administrators. It is now unthinkable that a research-intensive university would not have a research development team, says Adam Golberg, a research manager at Nottingham University Business School. “An institution where researchers have no access to specialist information about funders, and no-one sending them possible leads, is not one that is serious about research,” he says.

Each university has defined the job in its own particular way. Some focus on supporting applications, others take a more strategic view; some have a dedicated research development officer, whereas others combine the role with costing and contract duties. David Young, research funding manager at Northumbria University, sees funding development as falling into two categories: direct and indirect. “Direct support,” he says, “is about one-to-one or group-based co-writing support for particular grant applications. Indirect support covers the whole framework or environment surrounding research bidding activity—such as mentoring schemes, training programmes and mock panels.”

Development is still a relatively small part of research support. Jon Hunt, deputy director and head of the Research Development and Collaborations team at the University of Bath, estimates that such roles account for about 10 per cent of the team’s service. However, though the team gets involved in only a fifth of grant proposals, they “have supported nearly 40 per cent of the value of this year’s awards—around £20 million”, he says.

Even so, it’s difficult to attribute a successful application to a development office’s input. This makes practitioners wary of taking the credit. “It is hard to attribute increases in success rates to any one element,” says Linsey Dickson, research funding and liaison manager at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

For Justine Daniels, head of research development at the University of Sheffield, proactive engagement with funders is vital. They discuss schemes and applications and listen to feedback “that principal investigators can’t always hear”. As a result, Sheffield’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council applications have become more in tune with the council’s priorities, success rates have improved, and 20 Sheffield researchers hold fellowships from the European Research Council, up from four in 2010.

Daniels thinks that research development will increasingly become linked with post-award activity. As funders aspire to become sponsors, rather than distant bodies distributing funds, universities need to build on a relationship that begins before an award, and project managers will need to interact more closely with funders. Hunt agrees: his team has both research development managers and a research project management service that works on 14 projects worth around £17m.

Research development is a child of these straitened times, its bullish rise shadowed by the bearish withering of the economy. Budgets are tighter, and schemes have been axed or restricted by demand management. In this climate, research development has not led to a great leap forward, but it has prevented a slow slip backward.

At Kent, I believe the funding team has fostered a more positive research environment, from supporting individuals to developing an internal peer-review system. This has led to some notable wins, but more importantly has kept research—and research funding—at the top of the university’s agenda when the shutters outside have been banging in the cold wind of austerity.

#ARMA2013: A Tale of Two Cities

Nottingham. Or is it Las Vegas?

As many of our regular readers will know, ARMA is the Association of Research Managers and Administrators. Except when it's the Association of Residential Managing Agents. Or the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts. Or the Armenian Medical Assocation. Or the Assocation of Records Managers and Administrators.

Once a year, the 'proper' ARMA has a conference, and this year decided on the hashtag #ARMA2013 to use on Twitter. Only problem was, those interlopers, the so-called 'ARMA', decided to use #ARMA2013 too. And to heap confusion on confusion, they've only gone and held it in a similar sort of city to the Real ARMA!

Imagine the potential chaos! Fortunately, help is at hand. Fundermentals has provided this helpful cut out and keep guide for confused conference delegates, unsure whether they have arrived in the right city for their profession.

Nottingham and Las Vegas

So tell me, how do I know if I'm in the right city? Can you see a replica of a pyramid?
No. Statue of Liberty? Eiffel Tower?
No, no. And do you have your coat on?
Yes. Safe to say you're in Nottingham.
Ah. Jolly good. So what else do I need to know? Well, when Las Vegas was founded in 1905 Nottingham was approximately 1300 years old.
What! It had all that time but didn't make even a small replica pyramid? Yes, I know. Go figure.
So what were they doing? Well, hiding in caves, initially. Then making lace. Then bicycles.
Busy people. Probably trying to keep warm. Perhaps.
Anything else I should know? Nottingham's famous for Robin Hood.
Ah! The Sheriff of Nottingham! I knew I'd heard the name somewhere. Yes.
Surprised Las Vegas hasn't created a Sherwood Forest Casino. It's only a matter of time.
So Nottingham's got the history. What's Las Vegas got? Elvis.
Of course! But surely Nottingham's had some of the greats? Well Swing Out Sister did come from Nottingham.
Hmm. Is it too late to join the other ARMA?

Do say: 'Ah! They've reintroduced trams! How wonderfully sustainable!'
Don't say: 'The good thing about trams is they're so silent you can't hear them com-'

Acro-monious

I've come to realise that, in order to get ahead in research administration, the most important skill to possess is an ability to master acronyms. It's an unwritten rule that, whenever two or more research administrators are gathered, each must shoehorn as many acronyms as possible into a sentence, so that to any outsider they sound like Russians gargling nails. Thus, a typical exchange would run something like this:

'Judith! I've not seen you since the ARMA conference.'
'Good to see you Maureen. I've been away at EARMA in Dublin. I stayed around for ESOF, too.'
'How was it?'
'Brilliant. Some of the INORMS lot were there, you know, from SRA, CAURA, ARMS, SARIMA and WARIMA.'
'Not NCURA?'
'Oh yes. NCURA, naturally. Oh, and ACU. Good times! So how are things with the REF at UCL?'
'OK, but the 3A, 3Bs and 4 are proving difficult. Much harder than the RAE. I don't know what HEFCE were thinking. How about KCL?'
'The same. The VC and PVC think things will be easier if the JISC RMAS system ever gets off the ground. The HoDs are less sure.'
'I hear the problem with that is individual researcher IDs. HR has concerns. But if they take on board the lessons from CERIF-CRIS...'
'Hopefully ORCID will do that.'
'Yes. But the ResID lot will need to pull their finger out first.'
'True. But then is RCUK going to accept it? And what about HESA? It'll affect ROS. And e-VAL.'
'Hmm'
[general sucking of teeth]
'Oh, did you hear? We got that big EPSRC grant!'
'Was that the joint call with the MRC and NIHR?'
'No, the one with NERC and AHRC. The PI and Co-I are ecstatic!'
'I imagine there's a raft of RAs and PhDs?'
'Of course! But the SSC has cocked up the award announcement.'
'No!'
'Yes. Gave the wrong amount via JeS!'
'It wasn't fEC?'
'No!'
'So much for TRAC!!'
[both laugh, and wipe tears from their eyes]

Ah, you had to be there.

'Monastic & Medieval': the Need for Change in UK Research

Day two of ARMA2012 began with another double-headed plenary. Say what you like about ARMA, but they do like their BOGOFs. This time there was a little more synergy between the two speakers. Prof Teresa Rees, PVC at Cardiff and head of the Leadership Foundation in Wales, started by casting her eyes to the stormy horizon. 'I advise the European Commission on research strategy,' she said, 'and they are worried about the UK's position globally.' Why? Because the UK's universities – in common with many on mainland Europe – are hidebound in tradition. They're so busy fussing about which gowns to wear and what the protocol is when addressing the sub-pro-deputy-vice-chancellor for the wine cellar that they're not noticing the young upstarts snapping at their heels. 'It's too medieval and monastic'. There's a need for fresh thinking, she suggested, from how to collaborate, to how to prioritise funding bids, to how to design projects to better reflect contemporary society. Academics and administrators need to work together in this.

Michael Jubb of the Research Information Network (RIN), and a member of the Finch Review, took over to talk about the challenges of expanding access to peer-reviewed research. The current avenues for dissemination are dominated by traditional subscription based journals. The internet had freed this up somewhat, but there was much more to do. He suggested that four elements need to be addressed:

•  licence arrangements need to be extended to cover more libraries, more sectors;
• policies need to be rewritten to proactively encourage or require publication in open access or hybrid journals;
• public funding needs to be made available so that business can access research outputs;
•  and institutional repositories need to be made more comprehensive, better linked, and easier to use.

So both speakers recognised the shortcomings of the status quo. I'll be interested to see whether their suggestions, their knowledge and their energy are enough to shift the monastic, medieval mass of research tradition in the UK.

Stat-tastic

The ARMA Conference 2012 kicked off with a two-headed plenary from Andrew Plume (Elsevier) and Sharmila Nebhrajani (AMRC). It was an odd combination: Plume gave us an overview of 'brain circulation' – that's the brain drain in old money – and Nebhrajani banged the drum for the value of the medical research charities' professional association. What did they have in common? Hmm. Availability seemed to be the uniting factor. That and an evangelical love of statistics.

Plume started by dispelling some myths. Rather than being a negative, the movement of talent brings enormous benefit. Not only do those who leave the UK usually return with additional skills, knowledge and experience, but the country also benefits from the 'inflow' of talent. Those coming are, according to Elsevier, more productive. Plume floated his proposition on a raft of numbers. The UK has the lowest number of 'stay at home' researchers: only 37% of British academics don't, at some stage in their career, move abroad, compared with 55% of Americans and 75% of Chinese academics. Elsewhere he produced graphs which showed the number of publications involving overseas partners. The UK has the largest proportion, but interestingly the EU27 graph looks very similar to the USA's, which might suggest that continent-wide collaboration makes it unnecessary to look further afield.

He then handed over to Nebhrajani, who executed a nifty hand brake turn to take the delegates in a completely different direction. The Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) is an umbrella organisation that represents a huge variety of funders, including the behemoth that is Wellcome on one end of the spectrum to the likes of the CGD Society on the other. All have to have rigorous peer review of funding applications if they want to be a member, and some 94% of charitable giving to medical research in the UK is to an AMRC member. The benefits of membership are that AMRC can act as a 'kitemark' to reassure the public that they're the real McCoy, and not some fly by night outfit, but it also allows the members to access some Dept of Health support.

Nebhrajani did raise a couple of more general points. Firstly, she made the point the the research community has to start thinking now about how to justify the 'ringfence' that the government provided in the last Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) in readiness for the next one  in a couple of years' time.  Secondly, she noted that charitable funding is beginning to fall: it fell by 1% in 2011-12 after rises of between 5-20% in the preceding four years. She finished by admitting that she was 'very worried' about cuts to NHS research funding, and the new landscape in which GPs would hold the purse strings. Not only did none of these locally-based commissioning groups currently talk about research, but in England and Wales the NHS was hamstrung by bureaucratic approval processes, meaning that projects took four times as long to get the nod than they did in Scotland or Germany.

ARMA Getting out of Here

Well excitement's mounting for the ARMA Conference next week. I hope to see some of you there: I'll be taking part in sessions on Key Performance Indicators with Jon Deer (lots of heckling for this, please), and on Using Social Media in Research Support with Adam Golberg, David Young and Julie Northam (heckling voluntary).

In addition I've teamed up with Jacqueline Aldridge to do a poster around the 'Grants Factory' concept. I've used my moribund cartooning skills to try and reinvigorate the lost art of the conference poster. Come along and see the real thing in all its g(l)ory.

If you tweet, the hashtag for the Conference is #arma2012, so you can join in virtually if you can't make it in person.