Participation Programme

The Participation Programme is intended to include international Tolkien Societies in the planning and running of the Convention.

Members

The following societies have signed up to the Participation Programme. (All links open in a new window.)

Benefits

Benefits are split into two areas: benefits to the Society and benefits to the society's members.

All members of all Participating Societies are able to register for Tolkien 2005 at member rates.

Participating Societies are able to organise and manage sections of the programme at Tolkien 2005.

Details

A Participating Society is an organisation that is helping provide content for the conference. Use of the word society in the rest of this document refers to such an organisation.

Why? The 1992 conference was jointly organised by The Tolkien Society (UK based) and The Mythopoeic Society (USA based). Tolkien fans from other parts of the world expressed interest in being involved in similar events in the future. There has been a large increase in the number of Tolkien Societies around the globe in the decade since then (or at least in the number that have made themselves known to The Tolkien Society). We are trying to involve everyone around the world who wishes to be involved.

What needs doing?

On the current draught outline of the conference, there are 40 sessions of 4 hours each that need to be organised. These are currently divided into two streams of lectures, with morning and afternoon sessions (14 sessions) and two streams of informal activities, with morning, afternoon and evening sessions (26 sessions).

It is intended that societies should organise one or more sessions, or group together with one or more other societies to organise a session.

The Lecture Sessions will include lectures and panels on at least relatively serious topics.

The daytime Informal Sessions can include quizes, games, less serious lectures and panels, and anything else that anyone wishes to organise.

The evening Informal Sessions are intended for entertainments.

A guideline template for a talk or panel session (lecture or informal) would divide it into 4. Each hour having 5 mins for movement, 40 minutes for a talk (or 2 shorter 20 minute talks) and 15 minutes for questions and discussion.

Every session will have a moderator appointed by the organising society.

Topics will be allocated to societies on a first come first served basis. If two societies wish to organise a session on the same topic then they may be asked if they wish to collaborate, or in the case of a topic with a large number of expected contributions, divide the topic between them.

A society should produce a call for papers for any topic that they wish to organise. There will also be a general call for papers distributed during 2003. Responses to this will be forwarded to a society whose topic covers the subject of the paper.

Some sessions will be reserved for miscellaneous papers, and session overflows.

A society may suggest guests to be invited to the conference.

A special session in a large room will be separately organised for talks and speakers which are likely to draw most of the conference participants. There will be no conflicting streams at this time.

The conference organising committee will help out with any problems or questions a society might have. In particular, the Programme officer and the International officer are mostly responsible for the Participation Programme.

How do I sign up?

You will need the organisers of your society to contact us. Ideally they should contact our International Liaison officer [Popup Window], but it will be OK to contact any member of the Tolkien 2005 Sub-committee, or at a pinch any member of the Tolkien Society Committee.

Contact

The Participation Programme is managed by our International Liaison officer [Popup Window].