VMs: Voynich Conference: preliminary description... [RFC!]

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

Here's my preliminary thoughts on the structure of our proposed one-day 
mini-conference: as it's your conference, all comments and suggestions 
(on-list, please!) about how to approach this or do this better would be 
extremely welcome! :-)

(1) Name - Voynich Manuscript Conference, London 2003

(2) Location - to be decided, but probably close to Central London (so that 
European list-members might well be able to fly in and out on the same day 
- though I'd encourage UK-based list-members to offer accommodation where 
feasible), and probably near to the University of London.

(3) Date - to be confirmed, but currently aiming for 4th September 2003

(4) Cost - to be calculated, based on numbers and venue. Non-profit, so 
hopefully low - possibly waived/reduced for international attendees?

(5) Schedule - to be confirmed, but perhaps something like this...

  9.30am	Registration, name badges, coffee/tea, biscuits, etc
--- Morning session ---
10.00am	Keynote - "Voynichology or Voynichophilia?"
10.15am	6 x 15-min short papers, plus 60 min discussion
--- Lunch break ---
  1.00pm	Informal lunch at nearby restaurant (or perhaps catering?)
--- Afternoon session ---
  2.00pm	6 x 15-min short papers, plus 60 min discussion
  4.30pm	Panel session - "Where next? How to collectively move forward?"
  5.30pm	Finish (but probably adjourn to a large pub & continue informally?)

(6) Publicity -
	through the Internet
	announcements to academic & special interest mailing lists
	press releases to Fortean Times, New Scientist, broadsheets
	TV programmes?, etc etc.
All suggestions welcome! Even if everyone on-list simply adds a link to a 
conference website to their email signature for a month, we should get a 
good level of word-of-mouth interest. :-)

(7) Profit - any surplus to go towards funding (a) a hi-res digital scan of 
the VMS, and/or (b) physical analysis of the VMS' (ink, vellum, etc).

(8) Numbers - depending on how things go, we should get somewhere between 
30 and 50 attendees. With the fresh interest in the Voynich sparked by the 
recent Mentorn documentary on BBC2, we may end up with yet higher numbers - 
but frankly it's an unknown at present.

All comments welcome! :-)

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....


______________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxx with a body saying:
unsubscribe vms-list