#Medieval: A Students’ Conference is born II

Hi! Nice to have a back. I hope you enjoyed a good break and are fresh and ready to dive into the next phases.

Phase three: Call for Abstracts (CfA).

What? Is? This? The Call for Abstracts or Call for Papers (then: CfP) is the invitation for interested people to offer their contribution to a conference. It should contain the conference themes, the expected length of the presentations (you can be vague on that at this point), the submission deadline, the maximum number of words, maybe even the format or file extension, and the e-mail account the abstract should be sent to. 

The most difficult part in this phase is to agree on the themes. Let’s look at Niamh’s thoughts on that: academic conferences are ideally “shaped around certain themes or groups of texts that speak well to each other.” Here, the difference between a real-pro-thing and students’ conference comes into play. The former might try to spotlight a highly specific topic, which only a few experts in the world can provide answers to. The latter, however, might specifically aim to encourage and include any student keen on participating. 

Et voilà, here’s our little conundrum.

We need a topic or a range of topics that is A) interesting and manageable for the target group, B) broad enough to accommodate all kinds of ideas and C) still narrow enough to keep all submissions D) under one headline together. The overarching topic of #Medieval was – obviously – The Medieval and under this big umbrella we included as many topics, literary theories or approaches as possible, interweaving the course topics of the Anglistik 1 department of the on-going and last semesters. (for inspiration check out the website under Abstracts: Topics)

Last point in this part: clarity. It’s important that the descriptions are comprehensible to your future presenters. Ask other students and/or consult a lecturer to test-drive your text helps check if your language has the clarity you were hoping for, and as a bonus you’ll get a free spell-check. Once you have a Call for Abstracts (CfA), it’s time to think about where to publish and distribute it.

Wait. Before we’ll dive right into campaigning, take another moment to envision and discuss the program.

Phase three-and-a-half: the program.  

It’s a bit daunting at this point to think about the program in detail when the big day still seems miles away and most the events haven’t been confirmed. It is what it is. The main questions of this phase are: what should the program include, which events or specific sessions can you envision? Plus, what’s the – very rough – time frame for this? Here is a list of possible items: academic presentations, poster session, lunch break, coffee break(s), other non-academic presentations (spending a semester abroad studying or interning), more coffee breaks, a dramatic reading, a karaoke event, a pub quiz, …

Advice: people need breaks, refreshments, and fun to stay awake and at it for a whole day.

With the preliminary plan at hand let’s move on to phase four: Campaigning. What’s needed here? A website. A poster and/or flyer. The channels to distribute the information.

Design it. Post it, announce it, spread it, talk to people. Start again.

A few words about designing the poster and website: A) Include all essential information: QR-code for the website, date, time, location, theme, topic. (I know this sounds so obvious! But – yeah – it’s astonishingly easy to forget something important. Speaking from experience here.) B) Make sure the contrast between the font and the background/images is high enough so that the text is easy to read for everyone. C) Take a lot of care and passion in designing your poster because it is the calling card of your event. Re-using and re-posting the poster or event ID with new messages helps people to remember and place your request.

Where to spread the information online and offline? Posters can be put up on campus (remember permission-department), flyers can be distributed around work desks, lecturers might be willing to announce the conference in their seminars, or you could go around to all courses where you suspect to find interested students and spread the word. Anglistik 1 and the Fachschaft of English and American Studies at HHU also use Discord and Instagram. Maybe that’s a good way to keep in touch and everyone updated?

Before moving on, give a big old think to why anyone would want to take part in your event. What’s in it for them? What kinds of skillsets can they develop? How are these skills beneficial to their studies or even future jobs? 

My advice for campaigning be consistent, be patient, and keep on posting especially if there’s little response. Pro-tip: approach people directly and ask them by name if they want to get involved.

You might have noticed that phase three is chunky and time consuming. Therefore, I suggest taking another good break before moving on two the final three phases. If anything occurred to you while reading this, take notes, scribble down any ideas you might have for your event, present them, discuss them, and … breathe.