Annual Report 2009, Vienna

The Ethnography Network filled the 11 sessions of the conference with one parallel session with 48 papers in total, although we try not to have parallel sessions as it reduces the attendance at sessions and splits us off from one another. We are keen to develop a close culture of people who get to know one another and to have sessions where we find time to discuss the perennial issues of ethnography and the varied focal context for our research. In fact due to some people not showing up the parallel session wasn't needed.

Each session had a theme although some of these were organised by putting solo papers together. We would have liked more symposia as we think these provide a good chance to explore a particular focus in depth and we have encouraged these in our network prior to the conference. We would also like more papers in symposia sessions - up to 5 as this can create a dynamic session and if there are non attenders it is less disruptive.
Attendance was the best yet averaging 25-30 and there were over 20 at our network meeting - a record.

However, we had at least 5 people who didn't turn up about whom we had no information prior to the event. We were saddened by this and look to the Convenors group to discuss how to prevent this in future.
We are in favour of improving quality and will be looking closely at it next year. We prefer fewer papers and higher quality but we would also like to increase the number of high quality papers.

We have an email network covering our organisation of over 500 people internationally and we organise an annual conference in September as well as edit a journal and a book series. We believe we are a coherent rounded network for all those internationally who have an interest in ethnography in education.