ISA Day #2

Today is my presentation! I was lucky and got into a good time slot, on a good day, and in a good location (10:30am-12:15pm and in Hilton right next to registration and across from the vendor room). Sadly some of my friends were not so lucky, as some of them got the last day, or the last time slot, or had a room outside the main conference hotel.

The title of my paper was: ‘My Dictator Don’t Tweet: The Use of Social Media in Failed States’. Remember its always about the title.

TB34: Thursday 10:30AM- 12:15PM
Does Social Media Offer New and Innovative Ways Of Understanding International Relations?
Room: Grand Salon 19, Hilton New Orleans Riverside

I was the last person to present (we were also one paper short due to the presenter being unable to attend due to the weather) and had about 15 minutes to talk. I talked for about 13 or so minutes. As one would suspect I talked really fast, but it went well. I knew two people in the audience (thanks Michelle and Dave for attending and thanks Michelle for the photos), met one person later (thanks Scott for attending), and 3 people I suspected were students from my PhD program. In total there were 30 people in the audience (I counted as they walked in), which are rock star numbers for a conference. The rule of thumb for a conference is that if the audience number is more than the number on people presenting papers you are doing wonderfully. I got some really good feedback and was told that I should publish my paper as no one is looking at what I was looking at. So that was really cool. After it was over, I went to the vendor room with all the lovely books on sale. I purchased a ton of the books for $5.00 per book! With prices like those, its was so hard to say no.

Then I took a taxi to the Cafe Du Monde for $6.00 + tip (it is apparently a 17 minute walk, but as I did not know where I was going a taxi seemed the best course of action). Three people had told me to go to the Cafe Du Monde and eat beignet’s and have a coffee (I don’t drink coffee, so hot chocolate was my beverage of choice). So the Cafe Du Monde was crazy busy, it was hard to get a table, there were pigeons walking between the tables, its cold and dirty, and my Minnesota nice did not help me get waitress (the poor Japanese family next too me was waiting for over 30 minutes to place their order and never seemed to get their waitress’s attention). Finally after about 15 minutes I was finally able to placed my order by pointing to what I wanted to on the menu (the waitress was about 95 years old and I have no idea what language she was speaking) and my beignet and hot chocolate arrived. The beignet was wonderful (but three of them was way too much), but messy with powered sugar everywhere and hot chocolate was ok – it tasted like Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate. When I was done I walked back through the French Quarter and looked around Jackson Square. I also did a little shopping on the walk back to my hotel and also stopped at Hurrah’s Casino where I spent $20 on roulette and won $45 on one chip! Supper was at this wonderful restaurant called the Grand Isle with fellow PhD students Michelle and Scott and I ordered a Lavender Salt Rita (way too strong), Chicken and House Made Andouille Gumbo (which was the first time I have eaten gumbo and it was wonderful), and Oven Roasted Chicken. It was a long, but wonderful day.