Cultural differences are real, my friends. In Germany, a conference is run like a plantation. Nobody is allowed to step away to prevent the one drop of productivity that can still be squeezed out of you from going to waste.
“Please keep it to under two minutes,” the German organizer of the conference would exclaim whenever he saw me head to the bathroom.
“It will take whatever it takes, ángel mío de mi alma,” I would respond and then drag it out on purpose to bug him.
In Spain, the approach is the exact opposite. Sessions begin in a way that I can only describe as random. I’m Ukrainian, which means I show up for everything in advance. Today, I came 15 minutes early to the session that I’m moderating so that I could meet the presenters in person and talk to them briefly about the structure of the session.
“We were supposed to start 15 minutes ago,” the organizer told me.
It is not humanly possible that I misread the schedule because I spend time obsessively poring over schedules.
“The schedule says we start at 11:30,” I said.
“Oh, yeah… “I meant to put 11,” said the organizer, “but then I kind of forgot. We can just start now.”
Of course, there was nobody in the audience for the first talk because everybody read the same schedule as I did.
I like the Spanish approach more because it allows me to float adrift into the landscape.
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