Junto 2009: A Report

Count yourself unlucky if you missed last weekend's History of Science Junto at the Linda Hall Library. The folks at the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City were great hosts, supplying everything we needed from venues to food recommendations. They should be particularly applauded for their selections of the Boulevard Brewery for the reception on Friday night (which also doubled as Alan Shapiro's retirement send-off) and their restaurant selection on Saturday night for the banquet. Coming from someone who takes their food and drink seriously, these places were really top notch.

Minnesota represented well. Eight grad students made the trip down along with a few faculty. Kate, Joe, and Hyung Wook all gave great presentations that should give the rest of us incentive to get our butts in gear and present at next year's Junto. I also enjoyed this year's banquet speaker, Lynda Payne who gave a witty talk on physician quackery in 18th century Europe. It was both interesting and funny; a perfect talk for a crowd of toasted historians of science.

The rest of the presentations were all interesting in their own rights. If I had any complaints it would be that the majority of the presenters at this year's Junto spoke for most of their 20 minute talk giving little, if any, time for questions by the audience. It seems to me that everyone, presenters and audience alike, would get more out of the talks if there was a good 5 mins of Q&A. Luckily, there was plenty of break time built in throughout the conference so I think that anybody who had a specific question for a speaker was able to ask it afterwards.

Next year the Junto will be held in Norman, OK sponsored by the University of Oklahoma HST program. Not that I need to give them any advice, but I will say that they should just stick to the three things that guarantee a successful Junto: Free alcohol, good food, and umm....free alcohol.

Junto - a critical commentary

Well, for those of you who did not attend the 51st annual Midwest Junto for the History of Science held here at the University of Minnesota this past weekend, I can only say that you missed out on one hell of a conference. Jole Shackelford did a fantastic job organizing the conference this year (with help from Jacob Steere-Williams and supposedly from me too, but I really don't deserve any thanks since I didn't do much more than say "yea, that sounds good"). Jole made sure that there were two things present throughout the weekend: good coffee and plenty of alcohol. Even if every paper had been horrible (and that was by no means the case), I would have considered this a good weekend just for those two reasons. Oh, and banquet on Saturday night at The Bakken was incredible. Cafe 421 catered and completely outdid themselves. The food was amazing, the company was great, and atmosphere was elegant.

So far in this Junto commentary I've complimented the coffee, the alcohol, the food, and the environment. As a grad student, I'm not sure what else really matters, but luckily we had great presentations and a large turn out to boot. I believe that the final number of attendees was 71 with sessions being well attended all day on Saturday and most of Sunday. Of course, the usual faculty suspects were all there, plus a good group of graduate students from various universities. A good cohort of Iowa State students made the road trip up from Ames, many of them presenting and the rest were familiar from last year when they hosted the event. We also had a good group of University of Oklahoma students make the trip up from Norman (stipends must be good down there in Soonerville, they all flew instead making it a roadtrip). Guest appearances also occurred by grad students from University of Wisconsin, Missouri, Eastern Illinois, and Missouri University of Science and Technology. We also had great presentations from what us graduate students would call "professionals" from Linda Hall Library and Duke University. I would discuss the papers that I most enjoyed, but that would just show how prejudice I am towards the history of biology....

In general, it was a lively and successful Junto. There was even a graduate student party on Saturday night after the banquet in which our carefully manufactured home brew was unveiled. It turns out, if this grad school thing doesn't work out, a few of us in the department could have a future in the brewing industry....see our new label here.

Next year's Junto is being held at the Linda Hall library in Kansas City. I've never been to Missouri or Kansas, so I look forward to seeing familiar faces in a new place next year!