sorry i did not notice the question on number of conferences i attend. in 2001 i suffered an injury and was unable to travel easily for several years.
up until then i had attended roughly 23 mostly international conferences as an invited speaker since 1977, about 10 more as a participant (not a speaker), and given about 40 more invited or contributed seminar or colloquium talks at various places here and abroad, as well as three invited courses of a total of 25-40 lectures abroad.
in the last 5 years or so i have received 2 international conference invitatiions and several invitations to give seminars which i have not been able to accept. this UGA birthday conference is thus the first one i have been to in a while.
it reminded me how wonderful and stimulating conferences are and now i am very tempted to go to a couple more in europe in june. the problem is that as a senior participant and not an invited speaker, airfare and hotels are quite high now, especially in euros.
our travel budget is essentially nil right now, which reminds me to suggest you investigate such things when choosing a university job.
since conferences are so useful, a travel budget is one of the most important ways for a govt or university to suppoort research.
so i guess for the first 25 years or so i averaged abut one major conference a year. the only time i did not feel the need to go to them was when i was at harvard. the atmosphere there was so stimualting, especially talking to David Mumford, that it was actually better than an international conference.
in fact when i did leave Harvard to go to an international conference, i found that the speakers were behind the curve of what was gong on right in the department at Harvard. In fact one of the talks concerned a result I myself had worked out and reported on to a Harvard colleague some 18 months earlier. So you could be more up to date by asking questions from people standing around the coffee room at Harvard than going to a big conference of experts.
at that time (1979-1981) Mumford, Griffiths, and Hironaka were all at Harvard, making it the center of the algebraic geometry universe. and everyone who did anything notable in the area would either send a copy to people at harvard for their review and approval, or would actually come up to speak about it there first.
as to conferences, there is a difference between being a participant and being a speaker. i find being a speaker even more stimulating usually because you are motivated to think very hard about your work, and you get to present it to a usually appreciative audience. it can be a real high.
As a speaker you also get the chance to advertise yourself and your work, and it helps people get to know you, which helps you get jobs, invitations, and grants.
being a participant, i.e. mostly listening, is more of a job, since it is hard to really grasp the talks in depth. the good side is it keeps you up to date in a way reading cannot do as quickly. it also acquaints you with the young people in the field, allows you to assess how strong and personable they are, and this is crucial in planning your own hiring.
if the talks are really good, you may learn something that inspires research of your own. I heard a talk by Mumford once that did just that, and the work that grew out of it with my colleague Robert Varley is one of the things I am most proud of.
As it happens I also said something in my talk that Mumford turned into a nice piece of work himself, extending some other work he had recently done. it was real thrill to have mumford call me over at lunch the next day, and show me his result. i still have the handwritten version of the proof he gave me.
by the way David Mumford is being honored on his 70th birthday at a 2 day conference June 1-2, at Brown, for his work in both algebraic geometry and artificial intelligence and perception. It should be a nice occasion, and if you are able to be in Providence then, it would be a wonderful way to begin your conference attending career.
, with four more to go -- including two long-haulers.