200 attendees paid to attend A Boring Conference, where they listened to boring lectures all day.
For seven hours, 20 speakers held forth on a range of seemingly dreary diversions, from The Intangible Beauty of Car Park Roofs and Personal Reflections on the English Breakfast, to The Draw in Test Match Cricket and My Relationship With Bus Routes. Meanwhile, some of the 200 audience members—each of whom had paid £15 (about $24) for a ticket—tried not to nod off.
Boring 2010 sprang to life when Mr. Ward heard that an event called the Interesting Conference had been canceled, and he sent out a joke tweet about the need to have a Boring Conference instead. He was taken aback when dozens of people responded enthusiastically.
Proceedings at the sell-out event began with a presentation about Ward's tie collection, noting that as of June 2010, he owned 55 ties, and 45.5% of them were of a single color. By December, his tie collection had jumped by 36%, although the share of single-color ties fell by 1.5%.
Even less stirring was a milk tasting. Ed Ross, an actor, swirled, sniffed and sipped five different milks in wine glasses, commenting on each one's flavor, finish and ideal food pairing. (Cereals got mentioned a lot.)
One eagerly awaited talk was about writer Peter Fletcher's meticulous three-year—and still running—sneeze count. With the help of graphs and charts, Mr. Fletcher disclosed that he had sneezed 2,267 times in the past 1,249 days, thus gaining a profound understanding of the passing of time.
Boredom has become a serious subject for scientific inquiry. A 25-year study of British civil servants published earlier this year found that some people really can be bored to death: People who complain about high levels of boredom in their lives are at double the risk of dying from a stroke or heart disease, the study concluded.
A Boring Conference 2012 was held on November 25.
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