If wikipedia can be trusted ;-)
Symposium originally referred to a drinking party (the Greek verb sympotein means "to drink together") but has since come to refer to any academic conference, whether or not drinking takes place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symposium

My lab gets really "sloshed" at one particular conference......

It's in the Oxford English Dictionary too. But what really interested me was the 'potein' bit - presumably this is the part of sympotein that means drink, and I soon thought of the Irish alcoholic drink poteen (poitin) - in this case wikipedia says the name comes from 'pot' because the drink was distilled in a small pot. Very interesting.

yeah well - how do you get all the important people together? you invite them all for drinks. then when everyone is there, you do some business, on the side.
cause the really important people can't be bothered to work and thus can't be invited to a work meeting, but of course some "work" still needs to be done, some decisions made...

next time i go to a symposium i'll expect there to be drinks!

The greek for drink is poto and the Romans used potare meaning to drink (or drink heavily).. hence we get potable water.. This led on to give potus meaning 'a drink or a draught' from which we get the english word 'pot' and so the Irish Poteen probably has this origin

It's a shame there isn't more drinking and less of the seminars