Get Your PRAM Zapped: Fall Conference on Prince Edward Island

Some of the friendly and wise fellows from silverorange and I have mistakenly concocted a fall technology and design conference here on Prince Edward Island for late October. You can read the story of conception here. Suffice to say that it was an inside joke that got out of control, and took on a life of its own, and, now that people have purchased non-refundable airline tickets from faroff places to attend, has become a Real Thing.

The conference is called The Zap your PRAM Conference. That’s prounounced “Pee RAM” for those of you who haven’t encountered this phrase, which is a piece of Apple Mac voodoo chanting (again, all is explained here).

I’m excited that we’re getting such a range of interesting people attending: Art Rhyno is coming from the University of Windsor, Tom Hughes (who designed the Reinvented logo, who I’ve never met in person!) is coming from the US, as is Buzz Bruggeman. Stephen Regoczei and John Muir, two cohorts of mine from my days in Peterborough are coming. And more names are being added to our roster every day.

The conference is “by invitation only” which is less a way of trying to deify ourselves and more a “we only have 40 spaces and want to get a good mix of people” mechanism. And we don’t want to fill the room with a bunch of technocrats. TED charges $5000 to do the same thing, but we don’t want to exclude interesting non-millionaires.

If you’re interested in attending just ask and we’ll try to accommodate you.

What’s the conference actually about? Honest answer is “we’re not exactly sure yet.” Only slightly less honest answer: technology, weblogs, design, people, ideas, and the mixture of all of those. The conference will be largely defined by the people speaking. And we’re working to have the “speaker” and “audience” distinctions somewhat blurry so there’s more of a rolling structured dialog.

In other words, this is all an experiment: gather some interesting people in Cavendish in the off-season and see what happens.

Stay tuned for more info.

Comments

Johnny's picture
Johnny on September 10, 2003 - 19:17 Permalink

Mybe I just missed it, but are there dates for this conference anywhere? I think it sounds like a pretty neat conference. Are there provisions for Reinvented employees to attend?

Alan's picture
Alan on September 10, 2003 - 19:46 Permalink

I hope there will be a website and “materials” — God, I love “materials”

Steven Garrity's picture
Steven Garrity on September 10, 2003 - 20:11 Permalink

Johnny: October 24-26 (see the site for more schedule specifics).

Alan, there will not be “materials”, but there is a website: ZapYourPRAM.org.

Ken's picture
Ken on September 10, 2003 - 22:54 Permalink

Isn’t PEI a great place to think?

Kevin's picture
Kevin on September 11, 2003 - 01:13 Permalink

ISN regrets to inform that it must limit its delegates to no more than ten at this time :-)