Most conferences tend to be boring, although not intentionally¹ so. But there is one event that is deliberately² dedicated³ to all things dull and tedious - the 'Boring Conference' hosted every year at London. 

 

大多数会议往往都很无聊，尽管这并不是组织者的本意。但是有人故意组织一场会议，说的都是全然无趣又乏味的事物，那就是每年在伦敦举办的“无聊大会”。

 

Believe it or not, it's a sell-out event where attendees are treated to talks on all sorts of boring things like paper bags, toilet roll quality control, lamp posts, and bricks.

 

How did such a thing as a Boring Conference come to exist, you ask? Well, it all started in 2010, when the man in charge of organizing an event called the Interesting Conference canceled the whole thing, saying that he was too busy. James Ward⁴, an English book author and marketer, replied to the announcement, saying that he liked boring things and that they should be celebrated⁵ too. His social media post got a lot of people interested in a possible event about boring things and he started getting questions about where to buy tickets for it. That year, Ward organized the world's first Boring Conference.

 

This year's Boring Conference, held at London's Conway Hall on 7 May, was the sixth consecutive⁶ event in the last six years and all 425 tickets were sold out in just a few days. Ward always opens up the event himself, because he likes to "set the bar low". If people start with poor expectations, then the show can only improve, he says. Last year, he spoke⁷ about postcard photos of the old Post Office Tower.

 

According to the event's website, "The Boring Conference is a one-day celebration of the mundane⁸, the ordinary, the obvious and the overlooked; subjects often considered trivial and pointless, but when examined more closely reveal themselves to be deeply fascinating."

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