This is a conference you can't afford to miss!

This is a conference I can't afford to go to.  Have you seen the price of GAS lately?

1. I thought Stuart Staniford was dead.

2. I paid BU tens of thousands of dollars over a number of years. Could I have a free ticket?

3. Why was the early registration discount moved? Could it be that nobody is signing up for these ridiculously high prices.

4. I already paid Matt Simmons $29.95 or whatever for the harcover. Why would I pay this kind of money to hear him tell me stuff I already know and dodge my questions?

5. What are these high prices designed for? So only Oil CEO's can sign up? My hairdresser in Kenmore square wants to go, she says she's always been a huge fan of Heinberg, but these prices are keeping her at home. She says she's sad, but reruns of Desperate Housewives are going to have to fill the bill.

6. These prices are ridiculous. The only people that can afford this are the Saudi students at Hairiri's new Business school. Next to the Burger King. You know where it is. The people you really want are the full-time working adults who take night classes and are paying $25 to park when the Sox are in town.

7. Peak oil is screwed if it is going to take this pay-to-play elitist attitude.

8. Where does the money go?

9. What is going to happen when people figure out that Stuart is dead? Does everybody get a refund?

10. Yeah. I will be there. And I'll pay full price if I have to. Study-up for any question and answer sessions you're planning on doing.

It looks like volunteering to help is the way to get a zero cost ticket.

And echoing CEO's concerns - Stuart where are you?

Not heard from Don Sailorman for a long while either - Don - do you fancy a sailing trip to Scotland - I could meet you on the west coast.

I understand the pain in deciding whether to spend your hard-earned money to attend a conference, which includes a collection of speakers - some of whom you've heard from before, or you may have read their books.   "Am I going to learn anything new from this?" is a legitimate question.

And we're exquisitely aware of the irony of burning quantities of fossil fuels to bring together 500 people to talk about alternatives to fossil sources, and using less fossil fuels, and climate change, among other topics.

Put this in the context of the mission of ASPO-USA.  We intend to make a difference.  Not by preaching to the choir, obviously, but by provoking a broad-based non-partisan discussion about energy policy, climate change, and personal commitment to reducing our individual impacts on the resources and climate of this planet.  Face it: most U.S. citizens only know about energy via the price of gasoline or the cost of winter heating, and they're oblivious to the myriad forces that determine that price, depletion in particular.  We need to break through that barrier and get people to understand what's happening, to start thinking about it, and finally to begin doing something about it.  We know this is a necessary prerequisite to achieving anything like a "soft landing" on the downslope of the depletion curve.

We're not deluding ourselves into thinking we're going to save the world.  But we are committed to doing what we can to raise the visibility of energy issues, to advocate for change, and to act as a credible source of information to counter some of the cornucopian proclamations like the recent statements from CERA.  If 500 to 700 people walk out of Boston University's conference center with their eyes opened and their heads filled with a lot more useful and credible information than they had before, and if they each talk to their colleagues, friends, and neighbors, and if the  conference gets some national as well as regional TV and newspaper coverage, we've begun to succeed.  It's very hard to turn the present supertanker of national policy around, the inertia is huge, but we have to push it every way we know how.

As far as presentation content and your personal enlightenment, we're working closely with presenters to ensure that each collection of talks covers the topic in as much depth as time allows, without overlap, and with new material wherever possible.  We can't cover every aspect of each topic, obviously, as we only have 20-some presentation hours to work with spread across 3 days, with non-podium time for questions, breaks, and meals.

To briefly address the financial aspect - at the risk of exposing some of the boring / unseemly / scary machinations of conference organising:

1. I'm sure you realize nobody's going to make a profit on this; BU and ASPO-USA are doing their best to break even, and if revenues don't meet expenses, it comes out of our PERSONAL pockets.  How many people would be willing to make that kind of commitment?

2. The Denver conference had expenses just north of $100K, and income matched expenses almost exactly.  Smart, or lucky? we don't speculate.  We just hope to do as well this time around.

3. Biggest expense is food - for 4 meals, plus mid-AM and mid-PM snacks, we're spending over $70 per person.  I suppose we could consider a category of attendee who pays less, and supplies all their own food - but most conference attendees expect to be fed, and it would be enormously disruptive and time-consuming for the entire audience to head out onto the streets of Boston looking for take-out lunch and returning for a lunchtime speaker.  That's a non-starter for an efficient conference.

4. Other fixed expenses obviously are travel and hotel expenses, for our speakers.  No way around this; air travel and hotels in Boston aren't cheap.  

Thanks for your considered comments and interest.

Regards,

   Dick Lawrence
   ASPO-USA

Why hold it in Boston? There must be cheaper places for hotels and airfare (las vegas comes to mind).

Hello TODers,

Unfortunately, I cannot afford the time and money for ASPO-USA either, but I hope Chris Skrebowski can display his countdown with a big display on the main meeting hall wall--aren't we down to about 1430 days left [if my failing memory is correct]?

Has Chris explicitly defined when he expects the 'rearview mirror' method to confirm his prediction?  I think 24 months of world production declines should be adequate for a crystal clear rearview mirror.  This should eliminate any short-term distortional statistic effects caused by hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and short wars like the recent Lebanese-Israeli battles.

I enjoy the changing quote box in the top right corner--clever idea.  May I make a suggestion for a TOD countdown clock to join the rotation?

My gut-feel is that most of us here on TOD have a 'peakoil window' between Deffeyes's and Stuart Staniford's Peakoil is about now and Skrebowski's and Duncan's Olduvai approximation of roughly 1500 days till the Peak rollover.  I think a countdown clock joining the rotation will help keep us at our TODer best.  If new info comes in, either pro or con, the homecrew of TOD principals can mutually decide to either add days or subtract even more days from the countdown [Yikes!] until the 'rear view mirror' method is crystal clear for the experts.

Should we split the above difference and start the clock at 750 days till confirmation by the rear-view mirror method?  That is where I am at, but I will accept whatever the Senior Staff of Prof. Goose, HO, SS, Dave Cohen, Leanan, and RR decide.

Then, all the rest of the forum membership can refer to this clock in their postings to numerically justify their Peakdate prediction and resulting confirmation.  In short, we will all be forced to be more factually rigorous in our postings unless we state our posting is to be considered as speculation as most of my feeble posts are.

For example: IMO, TODers Khebab & Westexas, and Darwinian have done a excellent empirical job for their Peakoil predictions, which is now--I think they would accept 750 days as sufficient time for the rear-view mirror method to confirm their prognostications now [but hey guys, feel feel to choose your own numbers!].  Perhaps Halfin, Freddy Hutter, and LouGrinzo would choose numbers greater than 1500 days.  Of course, we already know Yergin would choose infinity, and beyond!!!!

I hope Chris Skrebowski makes everyone at ASPO-USA pick a countdown number, as he has done, along with a confirmation date & criteria too--Kudos to him for having the cojones!

I wish we could pass a law requiring every IOC & NOC to prominantly display their internal predicted Peakdate & Confirmation date and criteria on their respective websites too.  Same for organizations like MMS, IEA, USGS, CERA, DOE, etc.  Then we would all see less MSM confusion and a bigger push for true data transparency by auditing as Matt Simmons suggests in "Twilight in the Desert".

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

Happy to see Stuart on the speakers list. Does anybody know what issue(s) will he tackle?

I congratulate the organizers for inviting Samsam Bakhtiari.