Symposium Update

The symposium committee met recently and came up with some guidelines and decisions.

Wee need the following committees; materials design, publicity, site coordination, book sales, presenter coordination and day of show logistics. This is not too much different than last time except that we’re devoting a bit more attention to the day of show logistics.

Materials design is responsible for creating the event program, registration form and event flyer. Although he wasn’t at the meeting to confirm this, Mike will once again be in charge of this.

Publicity is responsible for marketing the event. This may include magazine advertisements, placing flyers at libraries, getting our info into newsletters for various historical organizations and whatever mass mailings we decide to do. We did not formally fill this post but hope that Jim will do it once again.

Site coordination is in charge of securing the event space and working with the caterer. They will help on the day of event by making sure that CCA staff have the rooms open early, and that they provide us with the tables, chairs, microphones, etc that we need. Dave will once again do this job.

Book sales handles the ordering of the books, setting up the book room and arranging for returns of unsold books. Plus giving the pertinent tax info to the treasurer. They will need to find volunteers to staff the book room during selling hours. Ian, with help from Matt, will be in charge of this again.

Presenter coordination will make sure all the flights are booked, arrange for hotel rooms, and get the presenters picked up from the airport. Additionally they will arrange for the presenters to be delivered to the event. Nick will do this job again.

Day of show logistics means that all the day of event stuff gets done. Prior to the event they will need to find volunteers to staff the registration table plus volunteers for other assorted activities needed that day. They will also need to secure visual aid materials to be used during the presentations and make sure that someone will operate that equipment for the speakers, plus we will need a laser pointer (or two). They will also need to find, or be, the emcee. This position was left open for the time being. There might never be a single person in charge but various people who handle pieces of the task.


We want to promote the event stronger to college this time around. Last year we thought that area was lacking. Last year we also spent a fair amount on sending press release to various newspapers to the states surrounding Colorado. We did not think we got much response from this so will likely trim this back to just newspapers in the Denver metro area. Last year we had an ad in North & South magazine in conjunction with UT Press but doubt that we will have similar advertising this year. We also want to make a stronger push to get our flyers posted at local libraries.

We will be researching the viability of having a post symposium social hour. This would likely happen at the hotel. We need to research room size and cost. This might not happen but its something we would like to research so we know all our options.

Fundraising ideas were discussed and we have a few ideas for general fundraising. There was also some discussion of having a door prize drawing. We would like to do it but are not sure we would recover our costs.

This year our costs will rise because we are bringing in one more speaker that needs to fly in and a hotel room. There was some discussion of checking out lower priced chain hotels in the area to see if we could save some money.

There was a brief discussion of ticket price but it was quickly decided that we would stay with last year’s price of $50. That price allowed us to nearly break even and in our post-symposium questionnaire attendees said it was a fair price. Even though we will likely spend $500 more in airfare and hotels we will think of ways to bring in more people. Last year 2 additional attendees would have given us a very slim profit. If we grow the audience by 10-12 we should be close to even again with maybe a slight profit to use next year.