Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. - MPF

Follett Conference 2015?

I really want to see a conference organized for 2015. In case anyone wants to know how it can be done, here's how I organized a Follett conference more than 10 years ago, with no experience in organizing conferences:

(1) I adopted a tentative format, name, etc. for the conference. It happened to be inspired by the Asilomar Conversation Conference approach I'd experienced in 1996-1999, which I still feel is the most useful and powerful. I called it "Follett Conversation on Creative Democracy," since that seemed the essence of her ideas and work.

(2) I found a place that had meeting rooms, food, etc., availability of space, how much it would cost to pay for those rooms, food, etc. This place happened to be a university. I also considered retreat centers.

(3) I sent out a "Call for Themes and Participants" to every Follett fan I knew of, plus any organizations, bulletin boards, etc. who might represent people interested in a Follett Conversation. In parallel to this, a system was set up to accept registration payments, process, send receipts.

(4) Once we had teams/themes in hand, those were sent out to the world in another announcement, so people could find each other and begin working with their groups ahead of time.

(5) It all came together.

(6) We send out a "Proceedings" with the various teams' follow-up papers.

This Follett network is approaching 400 participants. Surely we can get a good level of attendance for an event next year!

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