Good news, everyone! Our application has been approved, and that means that FtB will be sponsoring a party room at Convergence on 2-5 July. We’re going to do the typical things one does at a nerd party: we’re planning on a table for games, we’ll have healthy fresh fruit and unhealthy quantities of liquor available, and inspired by those clever people at Skepchick who did this last year, we’re going to have some afternoon salons in which we discuss deep sciencey things.
We’ve already got one salon semi-arranged: Jeremy Messersmith and I are going to have a conversation about biology and music with attendees. You can suggest other subjects you’d like to talk about, we’re still in the planning stages. There will be a swarm of FtB bloggers there, doing menial work and providing enlightened conversation, so we’ve got a fairly deep pool of talent to draw on. Miri has already expressed an interest, and Ashley gives good conversation so I might lean on her a bit, but your ideas are also welcome.
Just our party room ought to be sufficient attraction, but apparently Convergence has lots of other things going on, too. You should register now and make your travel plans early.
Marcus Ranum says
we’re planning on a table for games
Just make sure you’re not unethically promoting and particular game. (eyeroll)
WithinThisMind says
Maybe I’ll show up and run a couple pathfinder scenarios.
mareap says
That’s great! I’ll see you there!
Ranzoid says
Ooo let’s do a Shadowrun campaign!
kaboobie says
Looking forward to it! My husband and I will be attending CONvergence for the third time.
yazikus says
Oooh, suggestion for a panel. I would love to hear a talk about ‘organic’ meat and dairy products. I now know about the sad truth that ‘organic’ veggies having a net negative impact on the environment, but I don’t know about meat and dairy and what ‘organic’ means when it comes to those products.
Azkyroth says
Yazikus: citation?
yazikus says
Azkyroth: My google-fu is sucking at the moment but I’ll keep looking. Basically it was a study that looked at what the USDA seal Organic means in terms of farming practices, and found that in large scale organic farming non-synthetic pesticides are used at a might higher rate (because they are less effective than the synthetic ones), and are not kept track of. Some of these non-synthetic pesticides are quite harmful to fish, etc. It came down to the idea that the USDA seal Organic doesn’t actually communicate to consumers anything meaningful and as a set of farming practices is not beneficial. I’m probably not explaining it very well.
Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y says
Ah.