CHICAGO — The shuttle driver got lost on the way to the 10th Procrastination Research Conference, threatening to derail the schedule. Still by 9:20 a.m. last Thursday, the 60 or so attendees had already completed check-in at DePaul University, welcome remarks and the first of dozens of presentations.

As they filed toward the coffee, their badges flashed their countries of origin — Germany, Turkey, Peru, India, Israel and Australia, among others.

“I remember when I couldn’t get anyone to talk about procrastination. Look at us now,” said Joseph R. Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul and this year’s conference chairman, who has published four books on procrastination.

For the last 20 years, Dr. Ferrari and his colleagues have worked to create what attendees described as a much-needed setting for sharing and debating their research, without being made fun of.