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The word conference is one of the most misused in the language—as many of us know to our cost. With organizers less skilled than the officials of Aslib, all too often it means that Professor X presents, at great length in the most dogmatic manner possible, a one‐sided view of his subject to an audience containing many of equal or greater knowledge than his own. The lecture is then opened up for questions, the audience being told in advance that Professor X has to leave in a quarter of an hour for a far more important meeting than the present one. The Professor then re‐phrases each of the three questions he has time for, explaining in his own words what the questioner really means or ought to have meant. Then in reply to a grovelling expression of thanks from the Chair, Professor X says that he has been immensely helped and encouraged by the opportunity of conferring with so many distinguished people who have given so much thought to the subject, following which he hastily leaves the platform disconnecting the microphone with his left foot and overturning the chairman's water bottle, as he bundles his voluminous notes into a brief‐case of which the zip fastener has long since expired.