Hello
James,
It was my intention as well, to arrange editing / printing / releasing (English is not my mother tongue either, so please choose from the words the one that fits best
) of a book made out of Conference speeches. The voice recordings is one source, but if the speakers could nicely provide us (ImmInst) with their original slides that they used for their presentations, it would greatly help to make a better quality book.
I am not sure if you mean to buy a book,
James, but the reason I am thinking of a book, is that it is the most durable medium. Basically you can easily read books that are 50 years old, but we have trouble playing videos that are recorded/saved in older electronic formats, e.g. older than a few years. Also an uploaded video will last only as long as the website lasts. ImmInst itself is only 8 years old, and usually it is hard to find a website older than, say, 10 years. So I don't know how long eg. youtube will be around, or any similar website we could possibly use to upload the Conference video materials.
Plus, usually for non-English speakers it is helpful to read at their own pace, not just listen to someone speaking which means understanding only more or less, and having to listen several times to grasp the idea.
So, I really prefer a book, which will be a source of information that can be read regardless of the currently used electronic technology, which changes for better all the time, making the older versions of the recordings useless.
Also, you can send the book to regions of the world that don't have an easy access to the Internet, or give it to people that don't like using computers. If the VIP Outreach project here at ImmInst is continued, than it would be a great book to send to such people. Whenever the ImmInst leaders meet any potential sponsor or have any official meeting with new people, it would be also a great gift for them.
Calendars and pens (that I ordered and that have been given at the Conference) are already nice promotional items, but a book would be actually a proof that a scientific work is being made here. Which is quite important when talking to new prospective people ImmInst can cooperate with.
So, to make a book, I need the speeches (text) and slides from the speakers (I have more than 200 photos from the Conference, but still I don't have a photo of every slide that the speakers displayed).
Then I may try to edit the book (I mean not changing the texts - only making it all in a form of a book, like adding page counting, photos and pictures and slides where they are relevant, etc.), and look for someone who would print the book.
What I'll obviously ask others to do, will be to please write a foreword, afterword, and possibly some kind of introduction by
Caliban,
Eric,
Sven, and possibly
David as the Conference Organizer, maybe someone else.
When I have all the texts (or almost all), I would be able to define number of pages and then ask the printer to give us a price; then ImmInst could pay for it or look for sponsors who may be willing to pay for printing the book. (Getting a quote is by default free of charge in Poland, so I can ask many printers and decide.)
We can schedule a voting if the members want a book with Conference materials to be released, but:
- some will be in favour,
- some will be opposed to the idea,
- some who say "yes" when voting will then not buy the book,
- some who say "no" will have a year to change their mind and can buy the book and even buy some more copies for their friends;
...so I would not take into consideration a voting, but just for political correctness you can make a poll.
Please rather take into consideration how you can use the book ("you" means the ImmInst leaders, not only the Board of Directors but anyone who actually wants to promote the cause, you don't need a nice title under your screen name to do that, unless you want to represent ImmInst officially of course) in the next years as a promotional material.
As always any advice is appreciated, this is not a closed project, you are welcome to add your suggestions
Now we have a lot of time to make the book, only I'd rather make sure that the speakers still have the materials they used for the presentations, so I'll rather collect them from the speakers as quickly as possible, simply to not let anything get lost. Other than that, we don't have any specific time frame, loosely I can say I'd like to have the book ready within a year, a half of a year will be even better, if possible. We'll see
So,
James, thank you for bringing this topic up, I have already spoken to
Caliban after the Conference and to
Sven and
David before the Conference, so I hope the book will be made
