Cameo # 1

How the Open Forum Evolved.

Professor Barry Fox, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Science, UNSW b.fox@unsw.edu.au

My first enduring recollection of the Ecological Society of Australia was attending the Symposium that the ESA held at the School of Australian Environmental Studies, Griffith University in Brisbane on 15th-16th May 1975.  My wife (Associate Professor Marilyn Fox) and I attended the symposium as graduate students from Macquarie University in the year we joined ESA. 

The first thing we later remarked upon was the fact that at the registration desk we were presented with materials for the symposium which included an already completed, full text, Proceedings of the Ecological Society of Australia, Volume 9, Managing Terrestrial Ecosystems, edited by Jiro Kikkawa and Henry Nix.  As this was the first such conference that we had attended we did not consider this as unusual, we thought that this was how things were done.  We were wrong, in 35 years of attending multiple conferences each year for many different scientific societies I never again had that experience of receiving the completed full text for every presentation in the Symposium at registration.  Volumes of printed abstracts are what one usually receives, although that is now moving towards receiving these on a compact disk or, as was the case for INTECOL10 in Brisbane, on a USB flash drive for insertion into a laptop to read abstracts.  So this has always stuck in my mind as an admirable introduction to the ESA, something that was largely due to the efforts of Jiro Kikkawa and Henry Nix to make sure this happened. 

The second thing that Marilyn later remarked upon was that all of the presentations making up the symposium were invited.  There were a total of 23 papers printed in volume 9, including three that were background papers for the excursions offered at the end of the conference.  The fact the symposia were for invited presenters and were Biennial (or sometimes three years was one of the reasons that it was possible to have the proceedings published ahead of time to hand out at registration.  However, Marilyn immediately asked the questions why was this invitation only system used and why was presentation not open to all members?  This struck a chord with Marilyn and she immediately resolved that she would set out to do something about it.

Marilyn became the New South Wales Regional Councillor in 1976, while still a graduate student, and at the ESA Council meeting on 13th February 1977 she put forward a proposal which was accepted, that the ESA sponsor “a young peoples’ symposium” and Marilyn was asked “to investigate the possibility of organising such a symposium in Sydney in May 1978 and report to the next Council meeting” (Bulletin ESA 7:1 page 11).  This was to become the First Open Forum planned for 15th-16th May 1978 at Macquarie University, as was published in Bulletin 7:2 page 3 with a call for abstracts.  The First Open Forum was held successfully; 96 people attended (34 were students) and 61 papers were presented (19 from students). The abstracts from these 61 papers were published in the Bulletin Volume 8:1 pp 4-16 in 1978. 

Roger Kitching organised the Second Open Forum (120+ registrations) which was held 14th-15th May 1979 at Griffith University, and filled the gap caused when the Symposium ‘Ecological Gradients and Boundaries’, planned for 1979, was postponed until 12th-13th May1980 at University of Melbourne.  The Third Open Forum was organised by Peter Bridgewater for 11th-12th May 1981 at Muresk Agricultural College in Western Australia, so that The Open Forum and the Themed Symposium alternated between years which meant that there was an ESA meeting every year from then on.  The Open Fora became so popular that by 1983 when there was a themed symposium ‘Ecology of the Wet-Dry Tropics’ in Darwin there had to be an extra day added to incorporate an Open Forum to provide the opportunity for presentations to participants other than those invited to present in the themed symposium. This continued with a themed symposium the next year in Sydney ‘Are Australian Ecosystems Different?’ when an extra day was added for the Fifth Open Forum.  However, by the 1988 themed symposium ‘Australian Ecosystems: 200 Years of Utilisation, Degradation and Reconstruction’ a milestone had been reached with the first 5 day conference held by ESA (28th August – 2nd September).  After a stand alone Open Forum at Wollongong (24-27th September 1989) there was a 4 day conference in Melbourne with 25th-26th September 1990 themed symposium ‘Ecological Interactions‘ followed by Open Forum 27th-28th September 1990.  Another landmark was reached with the 1991 conference in Canberra when for the first time there were 3 days of open forum and 2 days of themed symposium. This was followed by a 3 day Open Forum at Roseworthy College hosted by University of Adelaide 29th September - 1st October 1992.  From this time onward the ESA conferences have been held every year, designated by titles such as ESA93, generally as multiple themes conferences although on some occasions there has been an overarching theme, where this was appropriate

The idea for thematic symposia had been pioneered by the British Ecological Society and produced a stream of valuable books.  This idea was borrowed by ESA as Proceedings of the Ecological Society of Australia which produced a string of very useful volumes such as “Managing terrestrial ecosystems” (Vol 9) and ‘”The city as a life system” (Vol 7) in 1972, which was far ahead of its time, long before urban ecology developed, to give two examples.

Marilyn was delighted to be pushing the envelope, to be the first to achieve a goal, as the organiser for the First Open Forum.  Marilyn was also a strong supporter of the joint meeting with NZESA in 1998 at Dunedin (a second was held at Wellington in 2006). As well as being a driving force behind the Open Forum Marilyn also played a role supporting student participation, particularly with the introduction of student prizes as part of each Open Forum, so much so that one now bears her name: “ESA Marilyn Fox Award for Best Inaugural Presentation at a Conference”.