IATEFL Conference , Belfast 2022.

 The annual conference for the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language was held this year in Belfast. The mission is to: link, develop and support ELT professionals worldwide. Our association has over 4,000 members in more than 130 countries and this year around 2,000 converged on Northern Ireland to celebrate our first face-2-face post-covid event.                                            

The International Conference Centre Waterfront Hall was a huge venue by the beautiful River Lagan. Our program offers a wide range of event-types: workshop sessions, poster exhibitions, publishers’ displays, small group presentations through to large plenary sessions, so many of the venue resources are put to good use but accessing them quickly between sessions may be a challenge. That’s where volunteers help to lead us in the right direction. This year we had a large group who were all extremely helpful and obliging.                                        

Angeliki and I are old hands at attending conferences and we make sure we strike a balance between being educated as delegates and as tourists! That means we select our sessions very carefully to make optimum use of our time and to make the best of what is on offer on both fronts.                                   

For me this was a mix of good and not so good: there were a few presentations which gave you food for thought; others - especially by ‘big names ‘- were disappointing in being ill-prepared or thin in content. One delegate from the Netherlands said that one presenter was ‘resting on the laurels of his past reputation’, and I had to agree with her. Another disappointment was the alarming number of cancelled sessions which must have been a real headache for the organisers.

Some of us are a bit long in the tooth, but may still have something to say. In that case we must ensure it is pertinent and well prepared. Some of the delegates had come from as far away as Uruguay and Brazil - even European delegates had endured travel delays and difficulties to get there - we need to honour their presence and be professional.                             

And so we come to Angeliki’s presentation in a room housed in the adjoining Hilton Hotel, no less. Its gold and marble loos set the tone appropriately for the level of her performance! 😊 The talk attracted a full house, went very well and generated great discussion among participants. She received very positive comments but what really made her heart sing was when a former teacher, from the university she teaches pre-sessional courses at, told her this was one of the two best presentations at the conference, saying it was perfect! She was on cloud nine after that and that encouragement will live on to her next conference.                                     

And this brings me to a further role we ‘elders’ can adopt: to mentor the less-experienced which entails attending their sessions and giving them advice and support. We should never underestimate the value of an encouraging word to someone setting out on their conference career, or simply, as is the case with Angeliki, acknowledging that someone has put a great deal of effort into making their session relevant and interesting.

What more could we do but go celebrate over a fine meal and some nice wine?