Oy, my aching head!! And it feels so good...
This past weekend I went to the 3rd Annual ORCA Conference - and I intend to be a regular attendee. This year's line-up of speakers was an über-geeks dream come true, with a wide variety of species experts (birds, wildlife, marine mammals, horses, dogs, etc.) sharing their knowledge, ideas, thoughts, experiences, and notions of what to do next. A few of the speakers I had heard/seen/met before, a few were legends in the OC community, and a couple I'd never heard of before! What a wonderful mix... I was full of eager anticipation.
Friday morning dawned and I scurried to get all my morning chores completed before my ride/room-share for the weekend arrived. Suzanne and I had met casually a few times; this was to be our first in-depth time together and I will confess a certain amount of trepidation... three days (two driving, one at the conference) and two nights (splitting the hotel expenses) can be an eternity if people don't "click" (pun fully intended). Thankfully we got along exceptionally well, and I look forward to many intriguing conversations with her in the future.
Before 9 a.m. we were on the road, headed east to Texas. Texas, the land of gentlemen (we never opened a door ourselves), meat (more steak restaurants than any other three states combined), and terribly interesting rest-stops (free wifi and scary signs).
We rolled into the Dallas area well after dark, checked in (very nice hotel), and set about finding a place for dinner. Suzanne is a vegan, so we found a place that would work for her and had dinner. Off to bed, then up early on Saturday morning.
The conference set-up was excellent - but I was just floored by how many people were there!! I have no idea how many registrants there were, but seating for 75!! and the room was full. Honey was set out by the hot tea - now that's good planning.
We had arrived early enough to get prime seating (which I will prove later), but the multiple enormous screens around three sides of the room insured everyone would have an excellent view of the presentations. All day tech support was in quiet evidence, adjusting sound quality as needed with minimal fuss. After filling up on coffee I wandered the room... and found a board describing current research projects by some of the graduate students. Two of of the topics caught my eye:
A much-welcomed lunch break found me seated with several students at UNT, all in the Behavior program. Juniors and Seniors, I peppered them with the usual mom-questions about what they liked most about the program and what then envisioned next for themselves. Many want to work with people, not animals, and that is tremendously encouraging. After eating, I wandered around the building, and found a small exhibit of student and faculty art.
Last thing on the agenda was to be a panel discussion, but that was scrapped when a last-minute speaker was added. Bob Bailey. Yes, that Bob Bailey. The one of Chicken Camp fame, a mere twenty feet away from me. It was like having Pink Floyd in my living room, too freaking cool and yes I know how I sound ;-) I will confess to having introduced myself to him at lunch (trust me, he won't remember but I will!!). I was rapt, didn't even take notes. Bob was charismatic and passionate, his enthusiasm for the subject after all these years uplifting.
This past weekend I went to the 3rd Annual ORCA Conference - and I intend to be a regular attendee. This year's line-up of speakers was an über-geeks dream come true, with a wide variety of species experts (birds, wildlife, marine mammals, horses, dogs, etc.) sharing their knowledge, ideas, thoughts, experiences, and notions of what to do next. A few of the speakers I had heard/seen/met before, a few were legends in the OC community, and a couple I'd never heard of before! What a wonderful mix... I was full of eager anticipation.
Friday morning dawned and I scurried to get all my morning chores completed before my ride/room-share for the weekend arrived. Suzanne and I had met casually a few times; this was to be our first in-depth time together and I will confess a certain amount of trepidation... three days (two driving, one at the conference) and two nights (splitting the hotel expenses) can be an eternity if people don't "click" (pun fully intended). Thankfully we got along exceptionally well, and I look forward to many intriguing conversations with her in the future.
Before 9 a.m. we were on the road, headed east to Texas. Texas, the land of gentlemen (we never opened a door ourselves), meat (more steak restaurants than any other three states combined), and terribly interesting rest-stops (free wifi and scary signs).
We rolled into the Dallas area well after dark, checked in (very nice hotel), and set about finding a place for dinner. Suzanne is a vegan, so we found a place that would work for her and had dinner. Off to bed, then up early on Saturday morning.
The conference set-up was excellent - but I was just floored by how many people were there!! I have no idea how many registrants there were, but seating for 75!! and the room was full. Honey was set out by the hot tea - now that's good planning.
We had arrived early enough to get prime seating (which I will prove later), but the multiple enormous screens around three sides of the room insured everyone would have an excellent view of the presentations. All day tech support was in quiet evidence, adjusting sound quality as needed with minimal fuss. After filling up on coffee I wandered the room... and found a board describing current research projects by some of the graduate students. Two of of the topics caught my eye:
I believe the students at NTU in this department are the brain-trust that will take all of us to the "next level" of understanding of what is possible through OC. It is essential that their findings be published so the "rest of us" can learn from their work.
I'd been told that the speakers at this conference don't "talk down" to their audience. That is putting it mildly.
The keynote speaker knocked it out of the park. Three pages of notes made my hand cramp non-stop as he talked for an hour: Evolutionary Theory and the Analysis of Animal Behavior. Dr. Andronis effortlessly ranged from the unifying paradigm of consequential contingencies as a driving force of natural selection, to the fallacy of panselectionism, and segued into strategies of reproduction, exaptation, and behavioral cusps before I could catch my breath.
If I'd gone home right then and there, the price of admission would have been a bargain.
But no, we were just getting started...
Next up was Phung Luu, with slides and videos of birds - endless variety of species - in free flight performance (educational shows), kennel management, the responsibility of the teacher to reduce errors, the balance of training and the development of natural behaviors essential for mental & physical development and stability and how that actually makes training easier, and efficiency of production as a good business practice.
Kay Laurence, always good for a thought-provoking laugh, made the challenging concept of increasing criteria easier to digest. The analogy to glass-blowing and videos of micro-shaping (teaching a dog to back-up 360* around a cone in 20 sessions); the continuum of luring to free-shaping and its relationship to mental stamina; and research on undifferentiated results between luring, targeting, and shaping - fascinating!!
A much-welcomed lunch break found me seated with several students at UNT, all in the Behavior program. Juniors and Seniors, I peppered them with the usual mom-questions about what they liked most about the program and what then envisioned next for themselves. Many want to work with people, not animals, and that is tremendously encouraging. After eating, I wandered around the building, and found a small exhibit of student and faculty art.The afternoon session started off with a bang with Alexandra Kurland, whom I've wanted to see for years. "Loopy Training" is her name for using subsequent cued behaviors as reinforces for prior behaviors - nothing new there but her protocol for resolving poisoned cues was intriguing. Clearly built on Premak, the concept of an "anchor behavior" in systematically and ever-increasingly complex behavior chains was really interesting and something I'll be exploring.
Steve White. What can I say? I first saw him five years ago, and he is still the fastest talker in the room - so fast, I sometimes couldn't listen fast enough, much less take notes. So I finally resorted to using the camera on my phone - and what a good idea that turned out to be!
"Fluency" means many things to many trainers, but when put in the context of bomb sniffing (false positives OK) and drug detection (false negatives OK), makes running contacts and precision heeling look like child's play. Sadly, I didn't get a shot of his "J curve of change" but did draw one in my notebook - excellent explanation of resistance and progress.
The energy level in the room when Ken Ramirez took the stage reached a fever pitch. His topic of "Training to Save Wildlife" was, to say the least, controversial. I, like many others, have an ethology background, particularly to non-domestic species, most especially in the wild. My initial tension faded as he outlined his four pillars of animal care, priorities driving training, and a candid description of initial failure (condor reintroduction) and later success (wolf release). Ken detailed the use of a Skinner Box for remote training in a wild sea lion study, and the use of scent detection dogs to relocate sea turtle eggs after last year's gulf oil spill disaster. Why "good enough" just isn't. Once again, I was impressed beyond words with the care and skill; no controversy here.
Last thing on the agenda was to be a panel discussion, but that was scrapped when a last-minute speaker was added. Bob Bailey. Yes, that Bob Bailey. The one of Chicken Camp fame, a mere twenty feet away from me. It was like having Pink Floyd in my living room, too freaking cool and yes I know how I sound ;-) I will confess to having introduced myself to him at lunch (trust me, he won't remember but I will!!). I was rapt, didn't even take notes. Bob was charismatic and passionate, his enthusiasm for the subject after all these years uplifting.Training is easy, he explained:
But not simple:
And the space between those, my friends, makes all the difference.
So, how great was my seat? This great: no zoom, not cropped. When I grow up I wanna be a mega-geek, too...
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Yeah, OK, so it's blurry. Who cares. I was this close. |
Until next year...
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