Monday, July 24, 2006

Now confirming participation and starting the conference

So a couple of weeks ago, I sent out notice that we had raised the money to pay for the flights - many thanks to those who have contributed - we will be sending out invoices shortly asking for payment into the trust fund we have set up, some may have already received this. When those are paid I will post special thanks, linking to your organisation and/or project - please email me your preference if you are sponsoring this event.

A few of the participants have contacted me to confirm their attendance. I am just waiting on a few stragglers to do the same before I can pass a list of names to the tourism department to start coordination of the tour. Please note the list of confirmed names down the right hand column of the blog. I have promised to send out letters of formal invite to those who's bosses require it - sorry for the delay on that, to speed that up it would be very helpful if you could draft me up something and I will fill in the blanks. Email me that draft off list to leighblackall[AT]gmail[DOT]com

Some keen cookies have even contacted me to propose ideas for our event. That's great! Remembering that this is an open space conference, meaning my role is to get the money and coordinate the admin - your role is to decide the formats and events that take place. So, that's what the wiki is for. If you have an idea - or something you'd like to see happen in this conference, please add a link to the wiki and describe it in there. I will watch the space and back anything up with announcements here. That includes people who we are visiting. Start a page for your leg of the journey and add the things you'd like to try and do. As a group we can bounce ideas and make it work. I've started by adding an evening cruise on the Monarch to see the Albatross and Penguin colonies and a train ride from Dunedin.

3 comments:

Sue said...

I see that the Wellington Event is down for 27-28 September. This was not the plan, as this then directly clashes with eFest, which we are all involved in - organising, presenting or attending - from the Open Polytechnic. We were looking at 26th September as a precursor to eFest for this group event. These dates now makes it impossible for us to take part in this event.

Leigh Blackall said...

Nothing's impossible Sue :) could it be that I got my timings wrong? Thanks for the help - let's fix this then. Having a quick look, I can see that I put too many days in Dunedin. So that brings Wellington to 26th. Could that work? One day and a dinner to go through things, then off to eFest together.

Bee said...

Way to go, Leigh! I am spending some days on the sunny north coast of Sao Paulo with the family and checking my mail from a shoddy internet cafĂ© with three connected machines on the first floor of a stationery shop before I shop for some vegetables and salad for today´s lunch. Will be back in the city in three days and start the wiki then.