Provisionally assigning to Noemi.
Talking to speakers is necessary to:
Except care track people
I’ll handle that 
Ok, need the contacts
I created a private spreadsheet with statuses here (in lote5 gdrive). @Alberto, @Natalia, @KiraVde, @Nadia and others who got tentative agreements from speakers and want me to take this on: please fill in email addresses and anything I should know when following up. Please do this by Thursday so I can send personal inquiries this week.
Natalia and co., if you want to manage your own relationships that perfectly fine, just let us know what the status is so we can fill in a preliminary agenda and make sure they book their flights.
@Patrick_Andrews what is a good approach? Ask them about their itinerary and offer to buy the tickets for them? or push for later reimbursement (less elegant). Will you be able to buy the tickets?
Titles, titles, titles
I guess the first thing to do is to get titles, formats, content stuff. If you are unsure of travel specifics, you can push that to mid-December or even early January.
“Think lineup”
Another important thing IMHO is to think like a music festival, in terms of a lineup. Speakers should be made aware of each other, look forward to meeting each other; people should be sold on them (“Wow! Giulio Quaggiotto is coming! How cool is that?”). We could even organise an intimate dinner, like we did at LOTE4 for curators.
Hey, I guess I should do my part here as I “manage” the track. I’m still trying to contact Geraldine (she finally responded today, I hope we will talk this week), and some other people. I can manage my part for now;) Anyway, some more contacts would be useful, I’ll be also reaching out a bit more this week to find possible speakers again.
Sounds good.
Understood. Any idea who we would want for a keynote? It seems to me Giulio Q is a good combination of proeminence and not too niche a field. Any other suggestions?
Almost there…
I cc-ed some of you when needed to keep you in the loop. Most contacts are out of the office till next week, let’s see. In the meantime, assembling a page with the program as per Kira’s instructions… When done, we’ll put it in the menu.
Helping hands
Noemi, great work! I’m up to help you in the reach out and updating the program. Any chance you could put me in cc in all emails? Or forward them as they come?
Also, since I should keep up with travels/accommodation organization and budget I wouldn’t mind being the contact person that coordinates with @Patrick_Andrews. Given the last drafter budget I suggest we could advance some of the travel costs with the ER seed capital. Just to make sure that tickets don’t get more expensive. Let me know your thoughts.
Reimbursement on arrival.
Don’t know if anyone mentioned this but a reminder, we do not purchase tickets/ make travel arrangements in advance. People who secure grants are reimbursed on arrival at the event itself. This aligns incentives so people find the least costly way to get to LOTE.
Sounds like the #unfailed way
So we need to make sure that:
1- they confirm their participation;
2- they give us their itinerary details asap + accommodation aspirations (hotel or find a host);
3- they send us a name and description of their session;
4- we propose a schedule for it.
Anyhow, @Noemi let me know how I can chip in at this stage.
It’s taking longer… with some successes.
So Ilaria d’Auria, Meredith Patterson, Marek Hudon, Millie Begovic all confirmed, but it takes more time to put it together and have them settle on a title and scheduling.
The rest are problematic, and calling people who are out of office won’t do. But I’ll keep trying. In the meantime, trying to build two pages:
Aggregated LOTE5 Sessions proposals.
Aggregate schedule per tracks: this is harder because I don’t code and we don’t have the table editor anymore. bear with me or help me, either one will do 
We need this for outward facing program containing info about speakers not registered on ER.
What help do you need?
Beautification?
That is, if the structure is OK. Color of the hovering, table borders, maybe cells colored differently not just hours highlighted… dunno. If not that we’ll keep it as it is. I guess I’m not sure.
A note on caution
Hi there, so we’ve been sending quite a lot of invitations, and after weeks we’ve got plenty of confirmations. I suggest keeping an eye on the spreadsheet and counting those coming from abroad where we would be covering trips. I signaled them again and they amount to 6. But since we are in touch with difft people, we could end up overcommitted.
Also, the risk is that many of the speakers won’t take time to come aboard the Edgeryders platform and will want to do talks - which runs a little against the LOTE spirit. In line with this week’s tasks, I’m doing research on each and trying to introduce them to ER and viceversa… so we actually prepare the sessions.
Put forth a suggestion three weeks back
I don’t know if my suggestion on a session around building a communication satisfaction mechanism into our various e-messages that was attached to my wanting to come letter was noticed - I haven’t heard anything.
One extension of this thought goes this way: it should be inserted in required reading although it may not be the direction a LOTE gathering takes.
http://discourse.unmonastery.org/t/the-poisoned-chalice-of-the-unabbot/111
I’m in transit and doing the Granddad thing til after the newyears, but will check my post.
Best,
Bembo
Good plan
Hi Bembo, my bad. I kept chasing people who are not registered on Edgeryders and needed hand holding and I assumed well versed Edgeryders like you will find their way to propose a session here online. Crazy, I know. After all, we all need a bit of nudging. The instructions for how to do it are just as last year (see here). You start with a couple paragraphs saying what you want to achieve, list reading materials and tell us how much time you need and logistic support.
A draft program is now up online, to give you an idea.
See you next year then, maybe join one of our Wednesday morning calls (10 am cet) so you can meet our Brussels hosts.
Go be a great grand dad