This isn't a row that I'll be sitting at, but it's a new MLA intervention - presumably to stop people tapping and clacking away during sessions and driving people crazy - though wouldn't that apply to anyone who was just taking notes on their computer? Would they need to be banished to the back row, too? There were two people in residence in that row in our divisional session on Old Media this morning (and an excellent session it was, too), but I don't know whether or not they blogged about it - nothing turns up from a quick google. Maybe they Twittered - there seems to be a great deal of tweeting going on, which suggests to me whole flocks of people far better capable than I of summing up arguments, points, sessions, biases, and posing questions in the flick of a few opposable thumbs. I'm not sure how such instant publishing of one's response affects how one actually listens - for me, it's hard - impossible - to imagine having the confidence to blast one's responses into the public sphere so quickly.
Next year I'll be organising a panel on Horror ... I'm not sure where that idea sprang from, but get thinking ...
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