Bleah.
Literally, I should be presenting right at this very moment, but, instead, here I am at the office blogging away. I could have left early, but it's raining and I'm meeting Peaches (my partner) for dinner in a little bit. Didn't seem to make sense to head out wandering around in the rain...
When I realized that I probably wouldn't be able to make it to NeMLA, my first thought was, "Hey, I have a blog! Why not post a few excerpts here?"
But I've thought better of that (to my own disappointment because I'm really excited about what went into this paper and want to share it). Aside from the issue of preserving blogger anonymity, about a year ago, I had what I fear may have been an encounter with academic poaching involving another conference paper I gave, a senior scholar who heard it, and some subsequent work that person did. Even after a year, I'm not sure how to process this incident, not even enough to blog about it, though that may happen in future posts.
What I took away from that incident was that you have to be careful about protecting your intellectual property. I don't know about you, but I'd never even thought about what might happen to ideas (indeed your exact words) that you presented at a conference, words and ideas you were excited about but that were unpublished and uncopyrighted.
The upshot is that I'm not sharing in this format, nor -- though the panel chair offered -- am I letting parts of my paper be read or cited during the discussion part of the session. The paper will have to wait for another conference or some form of publication.
Those of you at NeMLA right now, have a drink for me (or maybe some poached fruit).
Wish I were there.
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