Seriously. This was a fantastic event. In summary,
As for workshops, you can view them on the f295 website - http://www.f295.org/symposium2008/ I took France Scully-Osterman's Wet Plate workshop over 2 days.
I highly recommend this symposium. Assuming costs remain roughly the same next year, rumoured to be in San Francisco, the Symposium fee was $150, courses cost about $200 for one day, hotel rooms were $115 per night. So budget about $1200 if travel and expenses are factored in and two courses or one two day course is taken.
Tom Persinger is an example of a great event manager. He communicates regularly through multiple channels - email, website, forums. His f295 Symposium website, not only has all the information you could ever need to attend, it looks professionally appealing too, is easy to navigate, has appropriate links, has e-business tools for online registration and payment, and is updated regularly with accurate up to date information. And as an organizer, he's not an instructor or an attendee. He organizes! Plus he's not pushing his photography or studio or business. Most importantly he's inclusive of everyone attending.
Other APUGers I met include: Peter Schrager, Winger (Bethe), 25ASA and Keith Taylor. Again. Everyone should go to this event.
An excellent, more cerebral review of the event can be found here by Leo Hsu: http://www.foto8.com/home/content/blogcategory/14/31/
Now, for some areas of improvement:
Regards, Art.
- excellent event management,
- regular communication and updates from the organizer(s),
- diverse attendees (wide age range, many youngsters and at least 50% women!),
- no one cared if you weren't an orthodox purist and did something in digital (we all have flaws),
- no one cared about your equipment or talked about their equipment,
- outstanding speakers who weren't peddling their own businesses,
- lots of door prizes,
- decent food to be bought,
- amazing facilities (multiple darkrooms, numerous meeting rooms, lots of equipment available for use, central place to hang and chat with others)
- great location in general to go out and shoot
As for workshops, you can view them on the f295 website - http://www.f295.org/symposium2008/ I took France Scully-Osterman's Wet Plate workshop over 2 days.
Now as for the rest of the Symposium, I went to the Alternative Photography Exhibition opening. I was struck with the works of:gr82bart said:
- Our own APUGer Keith Taylor's photogravures: http://keithtaylorphoto.com/ - I'd like to buy one of his prints
- Ilan Wolff's huge lunagram made without a camera: http://www.ilanwolff.com/ - I bought his books
- Beautiful daguerreotypes of Pittsburgh's skyline by Mike Robinson: Dead Link Removed - I want to take his course (And he's Canadian too, eh)
I highly recommend this symposium. Assuming costs remain roughly the same next year, rumoured to be in San Francisco, the Symposium fee was $150, courses cost about $200 for one day, hotel rooms were $115 per night. So budget about $1200 if travel and expenses are factored in and two courses or one two day course is taken.
Tom Persinger is an example of a great event manager. He communicates regularly through multiple channels - email, website, forums. His f295 Symposium website, not only has all the information you could ever need to attend, it looks professionally appealing too, is easy to navigate, has appropriate links, has e-business tools for online registration and payment, and is updated regularly with accurate up to date information. And as an organizer, he's not an instructor or an attendee. He organizes! Plus he's not pushing his photography or studio or business. Most importantly he's inclusive of everyone attending.
Other APUGers I met include: Peter Schrager, Winger (Bethe), 25ASA and Keith Taylor. Again. Everyone should go to this event.
An excellent, more cerebral review of the event can be found here by Leo Hsu: http://www.foto8.com/home/content/blogcategory/14/31/
Now, for some areas of improvement:
- Ventilation in the darkroom! Seriously - something bad might happen one day if this isn't corrected. Not really the organizer's fault, but this needs to be fixed IMO as an engineer that deals with facilities issues my entire career.
- I heard there were no breaks during the speakers and people were dozing off.
- Maybe, just maybe, have all the events in one location or closer. Just a thought.
- Maybe organizing some social events besides the openings. Not that Tom hasn't got enough to do already.
Regards, Art.
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