I just went to a nice talk by Michael Trick at the 42nd ORSNZ Conference being held at the University of Auckland today and tomorrow. The gist of it was that while Operations Research as a subject is doing really well, with many interesting applications arising in the service sector of the economy in particular, the OR societies are not thriving and it does not have a clear “brand” at least in the public mind. This is partly because of the “Bowling Alone” phenomenon described by Robert Putnam (less engagement in any sort of civic activity by younger people), partly because the very success of the field makes it more likely to fragment, and partly because of a lack of effort at cohesion. He urged the use of new technology (blogs, etc) to try to create more sense of community and focus.

The theoretical computer science community have realised that even within computer science their contribution is greatly misunderstood (see the Theory Matters wiki), and convincing the public is likely to be much harder. I would love to hear from anyone who knows the most effective way to address this problem of correcting misperceptions. It causes problems like the job market time lag and other evils, and we academics really need to attack it more seriously.