The next Rocky Mountain Civil War symposium is a mere 88 days away. Things are progressing well for another great event, it will be even bigger and better than our last symposium.
Our theme this year is "Lee Invades the North" and we'll be focusing on the Antietam and Gettysburg campaigns. Our panel consists of Russel Beatie, Ted Alexander, Bradley Gottfried,Lance Herdegen and Timothy B. Smith.
Russel Beatie, who is working on a multi-volume history of the Army of the Potomac, will provide an overview and give some context for the two campaigns. Ted Alexander, chief historian at Antietam, will talk about the battle of Antietam. Bradley Gottfried, who has done some wonderful work on Gettysburg including "Brigades of Gettysburg" and "Maps of Gettysburg" will talk about the battle of Gettysburg. Lance Herdegen, a leading authority on the Iron Brigade, will talk about the Iron Brigade's experiences at Antietam and Gettysburg. Timothy B. Smith, who has done much work on the creation of these battlefields into national parks, will talk about the formation of Antietam and Gettysburg and will include the modern efforts to return, primarily, Gettysburg to its war time appearance.
Like last year we will have time for author signing and will have many of the presenters' books for sale. This year we are adding a panel discussion to end the day's festivities. There will also be a Friday night social event. This extra event will be limited to about 25 people to keep the atmosphere casual and intimate.
Ticket ordering will be available soon on our newly revamped website so check back soon.
Here is a reading list of what each author has written so that you can become a bit more acquainted with each presenter:
Russel H. Beatie
The Army of the Potomac: Birth of Command, November 1860-September 1861
Army of the Potomac, Volume II: McClellan Takes Command, September 1861-February 1862
Army of the Potomac: McClellan's First Campaign, March - May 1862
Timothy B. Smith:
The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation: The Decade of the 1890's and the Establishment of America's First Five Military Parks
This Great Battlefield of Shiloh: History, Memory, and the Establishment of a Civil War National Military Park
The Untold Story of Shiloh: The Battle and the Battlefield
Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862
Champion Hill: Decisive Battle for Vicksburg
The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Engaged by D. W. Reed
Lance Herdegen
Those Damned Black Hats! The Iron Brigade in the Gettysburg Campaign
The Men Stood Like Iron: How the Iron Brigade Won Its Name
Four Years with the Iron Brigade: The Civil War Journal of William Ray, Seventh Wisconsin Volunteers with Sherry Murphy
In the Bloody Railroad Cut at Gettysburg with William J.K. Beaudot
Bradley M. Gottfried
The Artillery of Gettysburg
Brigades of Gettysburg: The Union and Confederate Brigades at the Battle of Gettysburg
The Maps of Gettysburg: The Gettysburg Campaign June 3 – July 13
Roads to Gettysburg: Lee's Invasion of the North, 1863
Kearny's Own: The History of the First New Jersey Brigade in the Civil War
Stopping Pickett: The History of the Philadelphia Brigade
The Battle of Gettysburg: A Guided Tour with Edward J. Stackpole, and Wilbur Sturtevant Nye.
Showing posts with label symposium planning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label symposium planning. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Symposium
If you are a member of the roundtable you have seen that we are doing another symposium. In fact until events prove otherwise this will be an annual event. Last April we had a very good symposium on our first attempt. I've been sending out invitations for a few months now, and having some horrible luck. Last time we got our 5 presenters from 8 invitations, and the 3 rejections were pretty much expected (those were the guys that seem to be booked 2 years in advance). This year the early rejections were again from the previous time's rejections so I wasn't too worried, but then we had a hard time filling the list after that. I was starting to worry, in fact I had come to the opinion that if things were still going as poorly as they were by January 1st that we might have to cancel it completely.
Until this past weekend we had 2 yeses and 8 nos. Friday I sent out a batch of invitations again, giving them until November 1st to respond. I created a secondary list of who to invite on November 2nd and December 2nd if we still didn't have a full slate. If by January 1st we had only added 1 more presenter I was thinking we should pull the plug on this event or try something else entirely.
But Saturday afternoon I checked my email and we had our panel. I'm doing some final touches on the list, just reconfirming with some guys about schedules but it appears that we have our list. When the list in final I will reveal the panel for all, as well as have a reading list. Then we can begin the process of making flyers, registration materials and begin the task of marketing our event.
Our theme for the next symposium will be Lee Invades the North. We will have a presenter for Antietam and Gettysburg. Also one to provide an overview and put the campaigns into some context. We will have one to give a history of an army unit that saw extensive action in both battles. And we'll finish off with one on the history of the parks from the end of the battle to today. The only thing we're changing from last time is that we will have a panel discussion at the end of the day. In retrospect we thought that would have been a nice touch. We weren't 100% sure how to handle it the first time so we didn't do it then, and since it was our first attempt we wanted to keep it as simple as possible.
I know its a long way off but our next symposium will be October 3, 2009. Mark it on your calendars now.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Symposium Committee
Our next meeting will be August 21 at Mike's house. Email for directions. We are in the early planning stages for next year's symposium.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Symposium Committee Meeting
The first meeting for our next symposium will take place this coming Thursday at Ian's house. Email me for directions. By the end of the meeting we need to have decided the following things:
1) Pick a date for the next symposium
2) Pick a topic
3) Have a list of speakers to invite, hopefully with contact information for several of them
4) Figure out what other organizations we want to invite to the event
5) Have a list of things we need to do to make the next event be even better than our inaugural effort.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Symposium Committee Meeting
We will have a Symposium Committee Meeting on June 19th. At that meeting we will decide on a date for our next symposium, what the topic will be, and who we will invite. Plus we will do a recap of what we learned from our first venture and how to do better the next time. The location of the meeting will be announced in the next newsletter, as well as on this blog and in our yahoo discussion group. If you have ideas please come to the meeting or email them to me at rockymtncwrt@aol.com.
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