The Society for Research on Child Development (SRCD) meets every two years in a U.S. City large enough to cater for several thousand visitors. Delegates still talk of past events where the sheer volume of delegates brought a small city to a halt.

This year the conference is in Boston, a city of 600,000 people that seems hardly to have notice the child development experts in its midst.

Conferences of this size resemble a cattle market in many ways. Delegates are herded in and out of pens. In each pen there are usually several speakers. There is little to divert attention away from what is being said; ghastly lampshades, dreary carpets, the ubiquitous American conference chairs and fellow listeners. Those not captivated, wander out; and then into to someone else's pen.

For the speaker it can be bemusing. SRCD is not for those who want to be the centre of attention. There are several hundred centres of attention.

To the uninitiated it might appear dreary and unappealing. But SRCD inspires. It motivates new students and experts alike. As Mark Greenberg from the Prevention Research Center at Penn State giving a masterclass said: 'I have been coming to SRCD since 1979 and each time I come away thinking I can do this work better.'

Whatever a person's particular interest in child development, there will some expert and novel contribution at the biennial meeting. The conference handbook is 500 pages long; the subject interest 20 pages alone.
In these short excerpts from we will try to give a flavour of the event; and draw out some of the emerging themes.