Conventions??

[Carol]

Sabrina wrote:
>
> 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. <snip>
> 
> 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. <snip>

> 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. <snip>

Carol responds:
Thanks very much, Sabrina. If I were actually planning to attend a
conference, that's exactly the sort of information I'd be looking for.
Now if Bekki will just answer the same questions for Portus and tell
me where to find that "Snape's Eyes" paper, I'll be happy. :-)

Carol, sorry to snip any of Sabrina's post, which can be found
upthread by anyone interested