Conference Home Page

We will spend three weeks of our semester creating and presenting an academic conference. If you do not know what an 'academic conference' is, please do a little reserach and try to get an idea of the purpose(s) of an academic conference. All of the professors you will be working with during your career at UBC are researchers, UBC is a research institution. And, most of your proffessors spend some part of their time working on research which they eventaully present at an academic conference, and typically their conference papers are then published in scholarly journals. This process is an essentail part of academic culture -- indeed, one could consider the academic conference in anthropological terms, as an essentail 'ceremony' of academic culture. Perhaps, as a type of rite of passage.

Your main objective at this stage is to express your interests to each other and discover a research question (focusing on some aspect of knowledge and the university) that you are all interested in trying to answer. Do not worry about how broad your research question is to begin. We will work together as a class to focus our different questions into a conference theme.

• duties of a conference organiser include one of the following:

- a committee of three will read proposals and decide on a thematic scheudal for presentations.

- a committee of three will create a conference program & homepage.

- I will need two people to assist me with video tapping of the conference and the editing and production of a conference video.

- One person to introduce the presentations and keep the conference on scheudal.

- and we’ll need a keynote speaker ( a keynote speaker is considered a ‘specialist’ on the overall theme of the conference).

So, if you are interested in being one of the conference organizers, please let me know what you might be interested in do

Keynote Speaker: Layne

Introductions and Schedual: Graham

Selection & Organizational Committee:

Grace Chan, Dace & Sally

Program & Homepage : Richard, Susan & Steven

Documentary Team: Jacqueline & Jason

Duties:

Layne : you have two main responsibilities;

1. To research, prepare and present two short talks ( 4 - 5 mins max) on the theme of our

conference.

2. To work as an overall co-ordinator of the conference. You should have regular and formal

communication with each member of the organizational team.

Graham: You will be responsible for

1. introducing each presentation and keeping the activities of the conference on scheudal --

this will include pre-conference deadlines. You and Layne will work together to keep things

organised and schedualed.

Grace, Dace, & Sally: You are responsible for:

1. reading all proposals and creating a thematic schedual for the conference.

2. writing descriptions of each presentation for the program.

Richard, Suasan & Steven you are responsible for

1. Preparing a homepage and program for the conference.

Jacqueline & Jason: You will be filming and editing the DVD. You will work closely with me on

this aspect of the conference.

Your immediate objectives are:

1. Talk together as a group and design a set of tasks and deadlines for the conference. You should

all do a little research to ensure you are familiar with the basic components of a scholarly

conference. You will each report on your discussions on you individual homepages. Layne should

provide me with a formal list of tasks and deadlines. Any questions, feel free to e-mail.

Guidelines For Conference Proposals:

Due: Wed. March 1st.

• A title
• A 250 - 300 word description of your research project and plans for

• An annotated bibliography of possible research sources.
• A list of group members

Your group’s proposal will be evaluated as part of your group’s grade. So,

put a good effort into putting together a professional proposal. The

presentation of your proposal may be as creative and innovative as you

choose.

Guidelines For Conference Evaluations

Read these guidelines carefully -- they explain the criteria I will use to evaluate the

conference and determine your group’s grade.

Conference Organizers will be graded as a team. I will assign a grade that

evaluates the overall conference that you will distribute amongst yourselves with these

objective in mind:

1. Demonstrate your abilities to work collaboratively.

- communication skills: setting up an online collaborative space.

- team organisation skills: determining necessary tasks and schedualing.

- creating a thematic vision and collaborating to co-ordinate and present

that vision.

- documenting and presenting the results of your collaboration.

Presenting Groups will also be graded as a group with the same primary objective:

1. Demonstrate your abilities to work collaboratively.

- communication skills: setting up an online collaborative space.

- team organisation skills: determining necessary tasks and schedualing.

- creating a thematic vision and collaborating to co-ordinate and present

that vision.

- documenting and presenting the results of your collaboration.

If you DO NOT attend workshops you ARE NOT a part of the Conference

and accordingly will not be evaluated.

Friday March 3rd. : GUIDELINES FOR CONFERENCE ORGANIZORS:

Layne, Graham, Grace, Dace, Sally, Richard, Susan, Steven, Jacqueline & Jason

This is your conference, as a group of ten you are collectively responsible for the success of the

overall administration and presentation of the conference. This means every element of the

conference. I am of course, more than happy to guide and advise you along the way -- but, I would

like you to take on the full responsibility of designing this conference.

You are a team of ten organized into committees and individual responsibilities, and if one person

can not fulfil their duties, others step in for the sake of the Conference. You have your assigned

duties, take a look at the Workshop Guidelines I have posted -- and I look forward to Monday’s

Workshop.

Your Immediate Objectives are:

Layne you need to provide me with a list of tasks and deadlines for each organizor. I’d like

to have an overall impression of everyone's schedual and duties. If you could post this -- has

anyone started a Conference WikiPage yet? I’d like to have a virtual space just for organizing the

conference. If this isn’t available by Sunday, I guess you could just e-mail me the list of tasks and

sched.

Graham: You should be working with Layne to create an overall administrative system --

Your duties are comparable to a Master of Ceremonies -- you work both behind the scenes with

organization and you work up front with the presentations. You are like the link between organizors

and presenters: this means you have an overall view of everything going on concerning the

conference. Stay on top of problems, help people work out their issues with organization, and be

everybody’ s friend.

Selection Committee: For Monday you need to be prepared to discuss proposals with each

group. Schedual your time accordingly, you’ll need more time with some groups, less time with

others. Break up and talk to the groups individually. This is in your hands! You need to make

evaluative decisions, and you have to communicate those decisions. You work as a committee --

enjoy the task and good luck.

Richard, Susan & Steven: . Do you have laptops to bring to the workshop classes? If not

tell me asap and I will try to book one or two for our workshops so you can work on the site and

the brochure in the workshop classes.

Jacqueline & Jason I will book cameras for our workshops as well. You will also want to

get some ‘workshop’ footage of people working together to develop the conference. Maybe do an

interview with the ‘Key Note Speaker, Phil -- you know, start getting some footage for our

documentary and start editing. Thinking about titles, style, background music.... you come up with

your own ideas.