Discuss Mailing List: A Note to Those who have Proposed Lectures and are Waiting for an Answer...

[robinnm (robinnm]

A Note to Those who have Proposed Lectures and are Waiting for an Answer...

Thanks to all of you who have proposed lectures for the 2018 Warsaw Conference. Your willingness to participate in the conference is greatly appreciated!

The Program Committee is busy at work and had hoped to finish by now (by January 31st), but we are all volunteers and scheduling people in multiple time zones (who travel) has been challenging. We have received about 350 proposals for about 150 time slots and believe that we are being offered mostly acceptable proposals - very few were obviously unsuitable. Therefore, our task shifted slightly to providing a comprehensive compliment of presentations, and this complicates the decision process - we are just not finished yet. Last night, we agreed that we do not want to inform people piecemeal or in batches. We want to advise potential lecturers all at once, if possible.

We hope to finish our work before February 15th at the latest. This is the original date that we hoped to have speakers return their signed agreements, but such is Life. We will ask that agreement letters with speakers be signed and returned as quickly as possible once they are offered.

We will be sending out email notices to inform whether a proposal has been accepted, rejected, or saved as an alternate. We will also be contacting some presenters to ask if they would consider changing their presentation to a 25 minute format, so we might still accommodate it and learn from your expertise. We are also interested in combining or associating similar presentations together and may choose to contact you to ask if you would be interested in a more flexible format such as a small discussion among presenters on a common topic or theme.

Meanwhile, we have been holding up hotel registration, and suggesting that potential speakers not register for the conference yet, so we can avoid writing refund checks as the principle speaker of a one hour presentation will be given complimentary conference registration - and we want to be sure that people who stay in the Hilton - which has limited space - are actually the genealogists who will be registering for and attending our lectures. We have developed a plan and will announce it shortly.

Sorry to extend your feelings of anticipation beyond January 31st (which was Tu'Bishvat so it seemed a good day to choose). We are close to finishing our work, but Shabbat is approaching. It will not be until next week at the earliest that we will finish the proposal selection.

You can write to the program committee at: program [at] iajgs2018.org at any time or directly to me at: chair [at] iajgs2018.org

Looking forward to toasting you in Warsaw! 
We are probably all ready for a little Schnapps...

Shabbat Shalom!

Robinn Magid
Berkeley, California
IAJGS 2018 Warsaw Conference Lead Co-Chair