As I mentioned in my last post, I was able to attend the National Leadership Conference at Calvary Baptist Church in Lansdale, Pennsylvania this week. I made a few general comments on the last post, and I intend on making more specific comments on my future posts, but I did want to add this quick little comment with the hopes that some of my fellow bloggers may carry it along a little. (I know that at least Bob Bixby's blog is read by Mark Farnham, for instance.)
I would like to make a call for a return for accessibility of the seminar notes.
In the old days, when you arrived at the conference and they gave you your big tan notebook (so much better than the red notebooks given at some other places:) ), the notebook was filled with (mostly) detailed notes from all general sessions and the workshops. It was nice to have all that available.
Now, I can understand some reasons why they might have wanted to adjust that. For instance, some would read the notes and decide which session they wanted to hear based on the notes - and often this would penalize the really well-prepared and researched guy because his notes were so thorough that you kind of figured, "I have everything he is going to say right here, let's go to this guy instead."
I can also understand that there are some who do not want the notes from the sessions they are not interested in and it is a waste of money to give them the notes.
My plea - Have some kind of table set up in a centralized location with all the notes of completed sessions and workshops available for people to pick up the ones that they are interested in getting. For instance, I would have loved to pick up Joel Tetreau's notes on decision making in the church, but could not find a copy of them. (I guess it was too popular. Joel).
This would allow them to wait until after the sessions over before the notes are distributed except to those attending a particular session, while still providing the notes for those who were interested. It will also prevent guys like me from going room to room looking for the notes from the completed sessions.
I know that some of the notes are provided on the web-site. Two problems with that: 1. There were many sessions (at least from last year) that did not make it up to the web-site. 2. Sometimes looking at the notes will help in deciding about ordering a CD of a particular session. (For instance, I happened to grab a copy of Dan Davies workshop even though I did not attend and I now think I want to order that workshop on CD - anybody reading that went to that session who cares to comment before I order it?).
Just my thoughts,
Frank
File under Conferences_, Fundamentalism_
Comparing the Scandinavian Countries
4 years ago
4 comments:
There was such a table in the foyer on Friday, Frank.
Greg,
I saw the one table that had a few stacks of the notes from some of the workshops on it (maybe ten or so), but nothing close to all of the notes from the workshops (judging by the CD order form, I would assume there should have been around 70 workshops, plus General Sessions. I realize that some may not have had much in the way of notes, but I did not see a table with anywhere close to that many sets of notes on it.
Did I miss the main one? If so, did you get all the notes?
Frank
The table was loaded earlier (before I realized what it was). It was surrounded with people, so I figured I'd check it later.
Rookie mistake!
Paul,
Thanks for the update on the progress with the notes for this year's conference.
Also, thank you for the explanation regarding what happened with last year. I definitely understand the idea of a new wa of doing things not quite going as expected.
Thank you, as well, for your work with the conference. I will probably restart my series of session evaluations and comments again on Monday, now that our building has been successfully purchased.
In Christ,
Pastor Frank Sansone
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