Conventions??

[Sabrina]

Hi Carol (and everyone else)!

My name is Sabrina and I think I can shed some light on the 
subject.  I'm the Chief Technology Officer for Narrate Conferences, 
Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and I've been heavily 
involved in their last two Harry Potter conferences.  I don't check 
in regularly around here, so if you have any questions, feel free to 
e-mail me at sabrina[AT]narrateconferences[DOT]org or check out our 
current Potter conference, Terminus, which will be held this August 
in Chicago, at www[DOT]terminus2008[DOT]org.

Narrate Conferences, Inc. and HPEF are both organizations that 
present conferences.  I'm sure Bekki can speak more completely to 
HPEF's mission and goals, so I'll leave that to her, but Narrate was 
formed to create amazing conferences for teen and adult scholars, 
educators, librarians, artists, writers and fans on a variety of 
topics, including Harry Potter. We like to create weekend events 
that draw a variety of people in to celebrate not only the topic – 
in this case, Harry Potter – but the community around the topic.  
Almost all of our team has been in the fandom for years and years – 
I came in during 2001! – and it's given so much to us that we want 
to give back to it.

Our current event is Terminus, which is a Harry Potter conference 
that will take place August 7-11, 2008, in downtown Chicago, 
Illinois, at the absolutely fantastic, historic Hilton Chicago 
Hotel.  The cost for five days of conference is currently $160, 
which includes two full meals, admission to almost all programming 
and events, and an attendee-only t-shirt.  (Keynote presentations, 
professional Quidditch and our Trivia Tournament bear an additional 
fee to cover the participants' meals or team t-shirts.)  If you're a 
fan of wizard rock, you can also add an option sixth day of 
conference for only $20; on August 6, we're putting on a 25-band, 
three-stage wizard rock festival that we're pretty sure is the 
largest wizard rock ever held.

The conference itself will be a mix of the sorts of programming you 
generally find at traditional academic conferences (papers, 
presentations, panels) and more informal events, such as a ball and 
a night focused entirely on fandom creativity (podcasting, 
fanfiction, fanart, etc.).  (We just finished our vetting process, 
and we'll start releasing our accepted proposals on our website in 
the next couple weeks.  I've seen the acceptances, though, and the 
programming will be an amazing mix of traditional literary analysis, 
fan studies, educational topics and even legal and professional 
presentations, all related to Harry Potter.)

These conferences tend to be a wonderful opportunity to interact 
with other fans of Harry Potter in person, to listen to theories, to 
debate analyses, to play a bit of Quidditch and perhaps take in some 
wizard rock.  Most importantly, though, is the chance to be with 
other fans.  There's truly nothing like a thousand Harry Potter fans 
in one place for one weekend.

Again, if you have questions, please check out our website or e-mail 
me. We're always happy to help.

Cheers,
Sabrina