I have followed the debate on 'tradition, its uses and feeding habits' at times with interest, at times with puzzlement. Through the process I've experienced at times yawning indifference and now and then the small glow of learning.
I come from the days when the debate would have been about 'folktales' and how they should or should not be told, and I live and work now in a storytelling community which still comes to semi-boiling point over this - partly through self-interest, partly through the importation of other agendas, mostly because tradition is a place where all people live part of the time, and most murders happen in the home. We use tradition and are used by it.
The more we look into tradition the murkier it gets, turning out to be both newer and less 'ours' than we would have hoped - our favourite local stories are worldwide, and some of the 'oldest' sounding tales were made two weeks ago.
We need to steer a course through tradition that is helpful, both to us as people, and as semi-selfish representatives trying on behalf of a larger more fitfully interested 'community' to do what seems best.
Which usually means trying to do as little damage as possible to what may seem at times an ailing patient while we try to resusitate and breathe life back into the patient story.
What we call tradition usually turns out to be a mad mixture of the old and new and secondhand tat dessed up. It is a slice through time, with not much inherent logic or consistency or intrinsic worth, but we have a human need to create a sensible picture from the mess.
It matters less what it is than what you do to it, and what it does to you, and if you are an interpreter and deliverer-on of tradition, what it does through you to other people.
And you will deliver it using a ragbag of old and new techniques, tips and tricks and heartfelt sincerity shaken and stirred both. If you need rules for yourself, invent them, but try to refrain from sticking your rules up the noses of other people. If you need definitions and guidelines and codes of conduct for tradition, carry on. If you need them for yourself.
Have a fun conference.
If I was there I'd end up throwing chairs, or more likely writing poetry to myself to keep me awake through the sad halfhours, while I waited for the occasional fantastic five minutes.