Perhaps after spending three days bitching about the disciplinary luminaries, grumbling about the tardiness of the coffee and getting legless together in the evenings, people feel a sense of obligation to people they've never met before and are unlikely to meet again - until next year's conference. Almost as if some intimacy barrier has been crossed - like the awkwardness of breakfasting together after a one-night stand.
The business cards collect like used condoms bearing testimony to encounters intense, immediate, but ultimately fleeting. By the time the CD arrives with all the papers, or the proceedings are published, one can barely match a name to a face to an argument.
But sometimes, just sometimes... one of those old, dog-eared papers turns up in a forgotten conference bag or under a heap of teaching hand-outs, and reminds one of something someone else mentioned an interest in. Dusting off a manila envelope, one slips it into the infernal mail, and somewhere, perhaps, an idea germinates after all.