joshwriting)2010 will be our 10th Greater Boston Area BIQ!
We have been in the following hotels:
Sheraton Colonial - Wakefield, MA
Holiday Inn - Boxboro, MA
Best Western - Manchester, NH
Radisson - Chelmsford, MA
Four Points (by Sheraton) - Billerica, MA
Do any of you have specific feedback about one or another of these hotels?
Do you have specific recommendations of hotels you would like to see us consider, based on experience with them?
I'll be adding in my thoughts shortly.
My intention/hope is to have this decision settled by the end of August, at the latest.
joshwriting)Our reason for going to May 1 - 3, 2009 has mostly gone away. I am still considering that weekend and the one 2 before it - April 17 - 19, 2009. (The weekend in the middle is NEFFA, one weekend earlier still is Passover, and one weekend after is Mother's Day.)
If I go to April 17 - 19, then we would probably end up at the Radisson Nashua (the former Sheraton Tara in Nashua that has crenelation).
The another hotel I am looking at include the Holiday Inn in Tyngsborough. Anybody have experience with them? They have made a nice offer for the May 1 - 3 weekend.
joshwriting)
Yes, conferences plural. We are going back to at least two and possibly three for 2009.
The Boston area conference is aimed again at the first weekend in May, May 1 - 3. We won't be back at the Radisson Chelmsford because they have already booked that weekend. It's too bad, though I have been annoyed with a number of issues.
Current inclinations are for us to go back to Chicago, but to go for the Bay area rather than the Seattle area for the West Coast conference.
Probably the most important element is that we are running a cohesive theme across all of the conferences: Family Dynamics. This is a severely underexplored topic in conferences and the literature alike.
Sternberg: "Unfortunately, the issue of the effects of the gifted label on family dynamics has generated little empirical research." From Australia, 2007: "We are conducting some desperately needed research into family dynamics and the welfare of children."
The area which has seen the most is underachieving gifted, but even then it is remedial rather than preventative the vast bulk of the time. We will include this aspect, but it is not enough. So, give some thought to topics, related fields, domain experts outside the realms of gifted education, etc., please.
Meanwhile, you might find this article from the January 1998 Journal of Marital and Family Therapy interesting. It's by Sidney Moon and Alex Hall - Shttp://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3658/is_199801/ai_n8779820/pg_1#
siderea)Anyone planning on commuting to/from BIQ F &/or Sa from the Boston area with whom I could bum a ride? I'd kinda like to go, but not badly enough to put up with a three hour commute out there which is what public transit would entail (I just learned that because it's rush hour, to take a taxi from commuter rail to the hotel, a 2 mile drive, one has to allow 45 min.)
joshwriting)
The whole form can be found at http://www.giftedconferenceplanners.org/Boston/proposal.html
joshwriting)
What do you think the YA program should have? Assume that we intend to continue offering what we have offered, but more, as well.
(What questions should we be asking to figure out what we should be doing?)
If you have comments that you wish to make separate\ from the LJ entry, drop me an email at joshshaine@netzero.net, please.
joshwriting)I have invited Ed Amend to Keynote and he has accepted. http://www.amendpsych.com/
I have invited Sue Jackson to come again.
The contract for Chelmsford is in my hands. I will review it this afternoon.
I prepped and distributed flyers for the conference at this past weekend's New England Gifted conference. While I was there, I passed the flyers out to most of the vendors and talked with a couple of them directly. In particular, I talked with David Fox of Zanga, a purveyor of neat and interesting games. They've been to a BIQ before and were wonderful.
I also talked with http://www.zamsquest.com/, http://www.nsgt.org/, and http://www.awpeller.com/. I think the Zam's Quest folks might come play. I'm not sure about the others. I will pass along these and other contacts to Lisa in the next few days. (Much easier to plan things with a site, I find.)
joshwriting)BIQ Boston is scheduled for April 13 - 15, 2007. Our most likely location is the Chelmsford Radisson, just off interstate Rt. 495, north of Boston.
They are offering $79/night for a guest room, which is pretty good for that close to Boston.
I am still sort of hoping that we will be able to get one of the colleges to host it, but it is about time to just decide where we are going to be.
laughingjudge)
joshwriting)What do you look for in a conference? Are there things you look for in a generic conference that you don't look for in a gifted one? Or that you do but seldom find?
There are on-line conferences now, in addition to live and video conferences. These are conducted through email, usually. I have been the 'speaker' at two of them, one private and one public. For those, one is asked to provide 'advance readings' for the participants. I am thinking this is a good thing - a logical extension of the 'first time conference goer' sessions I introduced to Hollingworth and have usually continued at Beyond IQ.
What sorts of readings, preferably on-line, do you think are 'minimum' for going to a BIQ, if any? How about to any gifted conference? Different readings for kids, YA, adults?
joshwriting)
Welcome to the BIQ Community. I am hoping that we can make a semi-permanent record of some concepts and ideas that permeate the HG/PG community, as well as putting out questions to explore. It is less a re-creation of a Hoagies or a GT (formery PG) Cybersource or a Haven and more an analog to them, providing a place to explore questions and resources in different ways than those sources or the email lists do.
How will it go? I don't really know! I look forward to finding out, though.
If you prefer a message board format for discussion, let me point out http://beyondiq.proboards.com/index.cgi