That moment of rest was very short lived. Since last we communicated, 9 speakers dropped out of the meeting, requiring me to rearrange the entire program. Unfortunately, the program was already printed and so when you pick up your program book, I want you to consider a few things.
1. I used a new printer here in Canada, and unfortunately, I did not communicate clearly my desires. So, the cover art does not actually cover the binder. It is lovely work, provided by Rachel Keuls, which you will find on page 1. So, all of the binders are plain boring white. No good. The pens depicted above will be available to you to personalize your covers and the best decorated cover will be selected, and the winner will get a lovely prize.
2. The agenda is completely re-arranged. If you received a letter telling you that your abstract was selected and you will be presenting your work on Tuesday morning, it is not necessarily true. Please refer to the agenda (final version 5-that means after 24 draft versions we still did 5 more versions once we thought it was final). We have printed out this version and you can replace the ancient version in your program book with our best thinking of the agenda as of 5pm July 31st.
3. Be kind….there may be regrettable errors in your academic title, your salutation, typos in the program. The Directory is not in perfect alphabetical order as some late registrations came in and we thought we were almost done with the program. We are amateurs and actually have day jobs so all this coming at us at the last minute just might have resulted in mistakes. I have personally never been one to let perfection be the enemy of progress (Churchill) so I don’t think this is perfect. But darn close. If you find a mistake and it bothers you, then it was Xue’s fault. Not really.
4. I would like to request that you submit your presentation ppt to OneDrive that Xue has set up for you as below. I know people like to make last minute changes, but it would be nice to have them before the start of the meeting. I was required today to submit my ppt for a conference in November!!! Craaazeeee! Do try.
Upload your Presentation using the LINK below, or you can upload it to Xue when you register the conference on August 11th.
Password: 2024NTD
PPT file name must include “FirstName -LastName-Presentation title”
See you in Vancouver! Can’t wait.