Obviously, programming is a huge concern. I touched on this in another post, but just knowing how many of what kinds of sessions you want to provide is just the beginning. Here are some example questions that need answering:

• How will we locate good people to run those sessions?
• How will we fill sessions for which we are having trouble locating people?
• Will speakers, facilitators, etc. receive free or discounted admission, and if so, by how much and for how many sessions?
• Will we pay travel expenses for some of those people? Who and why?
• How do we determine what sessions go into what event spaces?

Obviously, there are a lot more questions, but those are some of the highlights.

Another issue to consider is vendors. It is not unusual for conferences to have vendors, who may or may not pay for the space they occupy. While Hearthingstone is primarily a conference about religious issues, many traditions do not separate commercial activities from the sacred. Furthermore, a large number of polytheist leaders support themselves or substantially supplement meager incomes through vending.

However, offering a dedicated vendor space with rented tables presents liability concerns, such as the provision of security and the need to carry additional insurance. I know of some conventions that fell down in this regard, and it was not pretty.

Speaking of meager incomes, it is not unusual for conventions to have a hospitality suite that provides light refreshments to any attendee free of charge. Based on past experience, we should expect that at least a few attendees will be in need of more substantial food. While Austin has ample supermarkets and restaurants, some of them operating 24 hours a day, not every attendee will have the means to make use of them. Hearthingstone will probably need to find a way to supplement these folks’ food supply.

In addition to food, many of our traditions involve the offering of alcohol, tobacco, and the like. Because Texas is a “blue law” state, we will need to make sure that attendees are made aware of the location and closing times of nearby sources, as well as legal limitations such as areas where smoking is prohibited.

One of the important ways of communicating this, and other important information is the convention program book. There are a great many questions to answer around this publication.

For instance- what paper size do we print it on? Smaller books are more portable and easier to lose, while larger books are easier to read but less easy to carry around and are generally more expensive.  Just a quick glance at Office Depot’s website tells me that even a spartan 12-page book will cost between $1.60 and $2.30 per copy for a black-and-white book.

Since Hearthingstone is partly about networking, it might make sense to print a small contact blurb for each pre-registered attendee (unless they opt out). Even at a minimal size, that’s potentially 5 or so extra pages for 100 people, more if we include space for a small picture. We could put these online instead, but building a way to show it only to registered attendees could be tricky. Do we put the book online?

Speaking of opting out, while many Hearthingstone attendees are public representatives of their traditions and/or communities, we can’t forget that some may still have very good reasons to keep their names and faces separate from their faith. We will need a way of balancing the educational benefits of recording sessions and sharing them afterward with the need to allow some folks to opt out of appearing in public. The same applies to any press releases or other media attention we eventually decide is appropriate for the conference- how do we raise the profile of polytheisms generally while protecting attendees whose identities need to remain private?

Lots to think about…

-In Deos Confidimus

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