[from Mary Powers 940405]
Cliff Josslyn re the CSG conference:
I wouldn't put the conference announcement on other nets without
a considerable introduction a la Rick's post to sci.cognitive. I
wouldn't post it anyway without a lot of preparation first, which
hasn't been done.
Whether or not anyone else agrees with me, I have come to see
this conference as primarily the once-a-year opportunity for
PCTers to come face to face and discuss what they have been
doing. This is especially the case for those who are not on any
net at all. Typically, each conference brings a few new people,
who, because it is so informal and has so much free time, can get
an intensive tutorial if they want. If the conference were a lot
larger, with a larger proportion of new people, we would have to
handle it a different way, with specifically teaching
presentations. This would have to be set up well in advance, not
at this late date.
I definitely think we should move on to a larger conference
before long. I would think a Gordon Conference would be ideal,
except Cybernetics fouled that well pretty badly. For that (for
instance) we would need about 30 of us as speakers, meaning just
about everybody who usually shows up at a CSG meeting with
something to say, and 70 people ready to hold still and listen
(still an improbable number). We would also need money (one of
the reasons I'm going through the grief of establishing the CSG
as a not-for-profit is to be able to get grants some day), mainly
to pay airfare from Europe and elsewhere. Setting all this up
would be a hell of a stretch for me, and I don't see a lot of
volunteers on the horizon. Meanwhile, we are fond of the setup as
it is, with all sessions plenary, and lots of discussion.
At the moment we are dealing with Fort Lewis College, since my
pleas for other people to find other venues and handle the
conference have not met with much success. FLC is not ideal, as
attendees will see, since among other things they feel perfectly
free to boot us out of a meeting room we reserved last July
because they want it for something else. If, through a lot of
publicity, our registration went much over what I have guessed it
will be, I don't know how well they could accomodate it. So
publicizing the meeting far and wide could have some awkward
results.
If you, personally, know some people you think would be
interested in the meeting, by all means let them know about it
(ditto anyone else on the net). My point is not to exclude anyone
who wants to come, but rather to assure that the arrangements
I've made are adequate for those who do come. While a general
announcement on cyberspace might well be wasted on the desert
air, it also might have consequences that would be hard to
handle.
Mary P.