How strange it feels to be far away from IATEFL Manchester 2015

I must admit it was my own decision not to attend IATEFL 2015 and I had very good reasons for doing so. For one thing it coincides with Greek Easter and family celebrations ought to come first over career and professional obligations. Secondly, it must be said, IATEFL is too expensive for Greek teachers and self-funded freelancers who have to earn a living in a bankrupt country like ours. Third, I needed a break. I needed to sit this one out and see what IATEFL online feels like, not as a complementary tool but as the main source of conference hype. So, here I am sitting in front of my laptop, pressing ''like'' and commenting on the status updates of all my friends from far and wide who are convening at Manchester. How do I feel? Well, frankly, I feel lonely. IATEFL has been a big part of my life and it feels strange not to be there.  

Lots of people have told me that international conferences are not really related with one's local teaching reality. I beg to differ. Over the years I've been attending IATEFL I have met hundreds of professionals presenting their ideas. I listened critically and many times  I found myself making their ideas mine. These ideas led me to research, read and then present my own ideas and write about them and most importantly, use them while teaching after I had adapted them. Conferences are all about interaction and professional growth, not about finding ready-made ideas to apply to next day's teaching. 

The first ever IATEFL conference I attended was in 2001 in Brighton and I felt I could never stand out in this huge crowd of professionals and ELT celebrities. I was so used to Greek TESOL conferences where ever other person was my friend. Back then there were no hashtags, no tweets and no social networking, therefore  connecting was more challenging and more personal. My first challenge was to get to know my way around those huge venues. Then the second was to actually follow  Dr Susan Barduhn's sound advice not to get too eager and try to attend all the concurrent sessions. My first IATEFL conference found me travelling to Greece with my luggage full of books (they actually gave us a the back then new Longman Dictionary for free!) and I thank God I wasn't flying budget airlines or I would have paid all these books in gold.  

I returned to IATEFL and to Brighton for the 2003 conference but it already felt easier and more familiar. Brighton was a place I could move about and I even attended my first Pre-Conference Event. Now, these PCEs along with the SIGs which organise them are gems. These concentrated workshop which focus on one area for the whole day, allow us to meet the ELT personalities who are central in this field from up close and give us the chance to actually talk to them and gain insights into their work and perhaps into our. They are truly priceless. It's interesting to think that back in 2003 I belonged in the Literature SIG, a polar opposite of the LAM (Leadership and Management SIG) to which I subscribe today. The different SIGs I have subscribed to, the different thematical areas of sessions I have attended over these ten (not always consecutive years) actually map the different steps and stages of my career. It's not an exaggeration to say that IATEFL is interwoven with my growth as a professional.  

With two professionals who have influenced me a lot, Penny Ur and Jeremy Harmer

Harrogate in 2006 was my first time ever as a representative of an Affiliate Teaching Association and that was a great moment as well. Seeing how other non-profit TAs around the world

Greek delegates at the Liverpool 2013 IATEFL Conference

function, how they manage to engage their members and keep membership high so that they don't fold while learning from the experience of IATEFL executives who run a much more complicated organisation than a TA, was a unique chance. I got to be a representative of TESOL Macedonia-Thrace Northern Greece board three times in my life and I really feel that I gained a lot and our TESOL got some visibility when we got to present our success story about how turning our hard-copy newsletter into a digital one, made the finances of our TA sounder and allowed that TA to reach a wider audience with a newsletter that was graphically more interesting than we could have ever afforded to print.

Then came Aberdeen 2007 and I was a novice once again as this time I decided to present. I will not admit how many hours I poured over a presentation that had already been presented twice in Greece, with great success. For the first time I put myself in the shoes of somebody who addresses an international audience that has different notions and different standards. I was presenting on the final day of the conference which was a Sunday (a very rainy one - the rain having started on Wednesday). During the whole conference I kept looking at adverts for other sessions and I kept thinking:''Why would anyone choose to come to mine?'' and once again, although Facebook existed, we didn't post events or invite people to our sessions using social media and that was only 8 years ago. Do you want to know how large my audience was on that first IATELF talk?  6 people! But, when the first disappointment wore off, it was warm and it was interesting and, surpirse, surprise, I covered all of the slides and the extra material. More importantly, one of the participants told me in the end: '' I had no idea language teaching in Greece was so advanced.'' and, allow me to say, I was full of pride. 

Since then, I have presented another 5 times and one of these times was in an Interactive Language Fair, which is frankly one of the most mind boggling ways of presenting, a cross between a talk and a poster presentation, only without a poster. I have been fortunate to have had one of my sessions included in the LAM SIG day programme and included in the Conference Selections of that year. I have been fortunate to have have been the mentor of  two wonderful Greek ladies full of promise and professional potential, who hardly needed mentoring before their first IATEFL presentation. I will always feel proud of them and follow their every professional step with admiration and pride.  I have written the ELT NEWS article covering the IATEFL conference 10 times and it feels odd that I won't be writing it this year. Most importantly, now that social media are central in our work, my connections are 89% IATEFL related. So, in way I did make my (relatively small) mark in that huge conference. After all, it is not about one person making their mark but about all of us contributing so that IATEFL can make its mark in the modern ELT history. 

To all of my friends attending IATEFL Manchester 2015, have a great convention and enjoy every minute of it! To those of us who aren't, let us spend a moment to consider how fortunate we are to have the technology and the means to share this conference even from so far away. 

Last year's IATEFL Conference Poster