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Some remnant of my Scottish background makes it difficult to throw away conference bags. My recent clean-up still left eight of them, too useful to throw away. Many of them have all sorts of useful features and pockets for modern essentials: laser pointers, computer disks, mobile phones — even pen and paper. Indeed, I and my family like them for everyday use.

Conference planners buy them with part of the budget from our registration fees; this can waste resources. But a good bag that people keep and use will remind participants of a great conference for a long time. Envelopes or plastic folders are appropriate for one-day events, but not for a three-day event with multiple sessions and heavy abstract books. At one public health conference they gave out a calico bag, intended as a statement about resource use, but so weak that it tore during the first day.

Sponsors splash their names and logos across the bag for maximum exposure, at least during the conference. But no one will take it home and become a walking advertisement. The title of the conference in large print also decreases subsequent use. Who wants to proclaim one's profession to passers by, or, worse, to inform everyone in the bus, train, street or the waiting room about attending a conference in some exotic location? They will not recognise that it was off-season, and the beaches were freezing, or the snow had melted. During the conference, when walking to and from the hotel, or at important sessions in the ethanol dispensary, such printing proclaims that one is a visitor, likely a good mark for pickpockets and muggers, or at least to restaurant and shop owners, who use more subtle ways of removing one's currency.

Among the hundreds or thousands of identical bags floating around it is easy to pick up the wrong one. Organisers can be bedevilled by lost bags, while participants search desperately for their precious slides or disks. Better ways of identifying otherwise identical bags must be found.

One conference organiser found a pallet of simple small backpacks through a disposal sale. They were identified with a large tag, with names printed large. The tag could be flipped inside the bag when leaving the building. The quality control on manufacture was faulty, and some of the zips failed quickly, but one or two of them survived vigorous use for some years.

I currently carry a bag from a recent conference in Finland. It is sturdy, with useful pockets, and a discreet logo on the front that is suitably anonymous to outsiders. There is a drug advertisement under the flap, but the company probably gets some additional recognition from my seeing it over a long time. My portable computer fits in a bag from another conference, the title of which is printed in an unobtrusive colour only legible from close up.

I doubt that the hotel cleaners who pick up most bags after conferences use more than a few. Perhaps conference organisers could choose bags that will be more extensively used, ensuring remembrance of good conferences, and reducing waste from the early disposal of otherwise functional bags.

James A Dickinson
Professor of Family Medicine
Department of Family and Community Medicine
Chinese University of Hong Kong, China

Competing interests: I have no conflict of interest, except that I hope to get better and more useful bags from the next conference I attend. Regrettably no-one has provided any funds for this piece of research (but I would not be averse to donations from bag companies in the future).

©MJA 2001
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