Of course I have startd to think about the possibility that the event will NOT end up happening (this is Canada after all, but I won't delve into my feelings about my former home and native land). I have started to wonder whether I might try to put one of these things together myself.
If I was organizing a conference I would never have picked Toronto as the location. I would try to have it in Branson, Missouri instead.
Why Branson? Because I bet you could get Charlie Hedrick and David Trobisch right off the bat. That's an interesting conference right there. And then there is the city of Branson itself which is the perfect setting for a future Simpsons episode.
Branson is central and I could get conference rooms for next to nothing. You can get hotels for $50 and it's easy to get there. No passports, no hassles, no currency exchange. You know the old saying - first prize one week in Toronto, second prize two weeks in Toronto.
I would also run it like a real conference with entertainment in the evening too. We could go to the Shepherd of the Hills. That's got a religious theme. Andy Williams. The Osmonds (but I think they closed down their theatre). I could even invite my friend Jordan Loder to perform for a night. The possibilities are endless and I probably could get it all comped.
I would also do the unthinkable. I would also make a serious effort to get people from outside academia to attend. I mean it wouldn't be that hard to encourage the pious and the deluded to come out to this event. I could probably even get some media coverage. I also wonder whether you could even charge a fee for attendees in order that we get enough money together to fly in some notable guest speakers such as Agamemnon Tselikas to explain why his discoveries in other Greek monasteries demonstrates why the Mar Saba document might be a fake.
You see, by doing something like this you would demonstrate to all participants that our conference has no agenda. It would say 'we're just trying to get to the bottom of things' and that our only interest is to represent all sides fairly.
I know I could pull this off. If you fly in Tselikas I could probably get Birger Pearson and J Harold Ellens. I should be able to get David Trobisch and Charlie Hedrick. From there you could get everyone else, don't you think?
Of course we have to wait and see whether this Toronto event comes off. But even still it is something we could do in some other year. The point is that you could make this really amazing. We just have to wait and see if the Toronto event comes off or not ...
