To go or not to go?
On the drive home from the Sunstone West Symposium last night I felt pleased with the events of the past two days. The time was filled with lots of hugs from old friends, attending sessions on Mormon media (the bloggernacle, Big Love, NY Doll, and Hitchcock), thinking through the developing Mormon Studies programs emerging at CGU and around the country, focusing on women’s issues in relationships and the divine feminine, and so forth. Each session was provocative and interesting. I renewed old friendships and started some new ones. I saw young scholars overcome their jitters and present their research. Seasoned Sunstoners shared their continued enthusiasm for this forum. All in all, it was a satisfying experience.
But as I reflected on how much I enjoyed the weekend, I wondered why there weren’t more attendees. I know Sunstone isn’t for everyone, but I think many Mormons would really love the community and the intellectual stimulation of the Symposiums if they were to attend. So why don’t they go?
Have you ever attended a Sunstone Symposium? What was your experience like? Did you love it and want to return again? Why or why not? If you’ve never attended, what prevents you from doing so?
If you are someone who attends every year, why do you keep coming back for more?
April 24th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
I’d go if there were one in the Boston/NY/DC area — but I can’t justify the flight to SLC or CA (I’d rather spend that money on flying to the Exponent retreat. I have, however, occasionally purchased a taped session.
Are these available for free as pod-casts now? Where?
April 24th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Anonymous was me (Deborah).
April 24th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
You can dowload mp3s of the sessions here (though you’ll probably need to give them a few days to make this weekend’s sessions available):
http://www.sunstoneonline.com/symposium/symp-mp3s.asp
The prices are as follows:
During the first year following an event: the price is $4.00 per MP3 and for the second year following the price is $3.00 per MP3 and for the third year follwing price is $2.00 per MP3 and for all earlier years there is NO CHARGE for downloading
April 24th, 2006 at 1:30 pm
Great topic!
I’m one of those Sunstone subscribers who have struggled to get to the Symposium, despite the fact that I live in the Salt Lake area. My office downtown is within easy walking distance of the normal venue, so you’d think I could get there easily. My biggest challenge is mostly due to my schedule and career.
There is a real cost/benefit analysis that I go through to decide on how much of the Symposium I will attend, including the fact that I have four kids who love to go on vacation but who, for some reason, prefer things like Disneyland. Thus, the cost for me includes not just the time off from work but also the cost incurred by my family in terms of vacation opportunity. Saturday sessions are a different story, but for those weekday sessions it gets tough.
That said, in the past I have taken advantage of the proximity to attend one or two sessions each day, and still keep my projects on track at work. I don’t think it is the _full_ experience, but it gets me my fix.
I think this is why we see the phenomenon described as the “greying of Sunstone” - looking around, the attendees that most closely match my age are a small percentage of the total attendees. That doesn’t mean Sunstone is not a good place for the younger crowd (of course, younger is relative), nor does it mean that they are not interested. I think this is a simple reflection of the priorities and demands of life.
I know that Dan and the Board at Sunstone are very aware of this, and I see evidence that they are expanding their reach into new areas to meet the potential “Sunstoner” in a way that is convenient for them to interact. There is a great amount of faith and thinking to be tapped from each generation, so this move is very positive for Sunstone.
For me, though, until my kids are grown and I have the time to attend the full symposia, I’ll try to slowly ramp up my attendance. When I do attend it is a good experience, and I find myself quite envious of those who attend the full conference (especially when the program comes out and I circle all of the topics I am interested in).
In the meantime I listen to a healthy number of the MP3 downloads, interact with other subscribers online and in person, and keep saving up those
sickvacation days.April 24th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
I think that a lot of the problem is still the church statement on symposia awhile back. However, that was long enough ago, that I wouldn’t think it would account for what seems to me to be a recent dropoff in attendance. I’m just comparing my impression of how many people attended the last Sunstone West in southern California, and it seems to me that this was even lower.I also attended the one at the LA Airport Hilton or whatever it was, about 2000,which seemed to have more attendees. Basically I don’t know the answer to the quesion, but I wonder if the move to Claremont is part of the problem? Does it seem too far away to folks who live in LA? I hasten to add that I greatly prefer the Claremont location. I hated that hotel out at the airport, and that’s part of the reason I didn’t go back in 2002. Except for the unfortunate heating system in the building, I like Claremont a lot– easier for me to drive to, nice surroundings just outside, and good restaurants near. I’m just wondering if that could have been part of the problem. My husband won’t come to Sunstone because he says he spends too much time inside an office, in meetings,and doesn’t want to do more on his off time. I wonder if another problem is that Sunstone does have a reputation for being elitist and cliquish. People who attend don’t talk to anyone who they don’t already know. That’s been very true of my experiences at the Salt Lake conference; it was much better at this conference– probably because it was a smaller crowd. Also it seemed to me that this one was not quite as “grey” as some of the others I’ve attended; percentage -wise at least, it seemed like the under 40, and even under 30 crowd was fairly well represented. It also seemed more balanced in terms of women attending and speaking.
April 24th, 2006 at 5:06 pm
I live in Southern California and attended my first Sunstone Symposium in SLC last summer. I took the vacation days and travelled there at my own expense. It was worth every penny. I will be returning again this summer for one week, this time with my wife and three young kids. We’ll vacation together for the first half of the week, and we’ll “vacation” separately for the second half of the week — me at Sunstone (truly a “vacation”), and they elsewhere.
I attended the Sunstone West Symposium on Saturday. Great day. Congrats on another provocative and thought-provoking lineup. I too wonder why more don’t attend? I’ve mentioned it to a few friends and the biggest hurdles appear to be: 1.) lack of time; 2.) fear of provocative content; and 3.) lack of interest. The lack of interest seems to be a misconception that Sunstone Symposium is “like Church”, in other words “boring”. “Why would I want to give up my entire Saturday, and pay $40!, when I already devote a significant percentage of my time and money to the Church?” or so the thinking seems to go. I find that attending one time is enough to overcome all three hurdles: the attendee overcomes her fear of the content, realizes the topic/discussion really *is* interesting, and realizes she can make time in her schedule once a year for such Symposia.
What percentage of attendee’s are repeat customers? And what is the rate of retention? I’d imagine both figures are high. It seems the key is to increase first-time attendance by offering a better first timer discount, and/or offering a discount to repeat customers who bring along a first-time friend. The latter would work better than the former as I don’t think most potential first time attendees even realize such Symposium exists.
April 24th, 2006 at 6:37 pm
Matt & Paula:
Glad to hear that you enjoyed this weekends symposium! Our family now plans our summer vacation to Utah every year for the week of Sunstone. I missed last year because of the date change (it was in July and the kids were still in summer school) and I really felt left out. I hope it won’t happen again!
I think (someone correct me if I’m wrong here) that there’s a discount for first-time attendees to the SLC Symposium. As for the clique-ishness of SL, I agree that it’s a problem. My first year I jumped in and volunteered to chair a session and sit on a panel. I also went to the first day workshops. Doing so helped me to make friends quickly.
April 24th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
I think that problem is still that many people will not be willing to just jump right in at first, and will go home feeling unwelcome– it would be better for people who are already involved to be more friendly– and I think that it was a better atmosphere at this past symposium. I think that the academic model of Sunstone doesn’t really encourage friendliness; there’s also kind of an ingrained Mormon authority worship, I think, so that people tend to follow the big names around, and don’t realize that person next to them might be even more interesting. (A friend of mine commented about ten years ago about how cliquish the whole thing felt to him, hardly managed to get a conversation going with anyone, and this particular friend is a real talker– then two years later, his mormon novel had been published– and everyone’s clamoring to talk to him then.)
April 24th, 2006 at 9:12 pm
Just one other thought– how was attendance at the Bay area version of Sunstone the last couple of years?
April 25th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
Jana, it was nice to see you there. The Remys did a great job on the program. I wasn’t there during the day but enjoyed the evening session on Friday and Saturday. I thought you had a better diversity of topics than some of the past symposia.
I don’t want to threadjack but I curious about the reaction to the Saturday nite finale. I attended Sunstone Dallas a month ago and heard Clifton Jolley give his “Who Would Ever Believe the LA Times” piece there. I find him a provocative, fascinating guy.
However, having Jolley do the same piece — with Bill Lobdell of the LA Times on the rostrum — well, it created considerably more tension. I’m not sure it worked out as envisioned. During Q & A when Jolley responded aggressively to a question, my sense was it made the audience freeze. No more questions after that, folks.
But then, as Jolley would say, maybe I’m just being “too nice.”
Returning to your thread, Joe Bentley of SoCal LDS Public Affairs sent the Sunstone flyer around to his mailing list of mainline members and plugged the event, especially the “DNA and BoM” session. That’s the first time I’ve seen that happen. So the event got some additional coverage it hadn’t received in the past.
April 25th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
Rob:
Thank you for your compliments about Sunstone West. I, too, was pleased with the variety and quality of the program (which had everything to do with the great submissions we had and little to do w/my or John’s efforts). I did try, though, to recruit young scholars to chair many of the sessions. Though I know some of them were nervous–even a bit intimidated–I was thrilled to see so many younger faces (even the babies) everywhere.
I think Jolley’s speech would have been better if it had been 15 min shorter, had refrained from using racist language, and had been gentler on the LA Times [Note: I felt particularly uncomfortable that I asked an Asian-American friend give the closing prayer after Clifton's poem that included a literary reference to the old Bret Harte diatribe against Chinese!].
I was pleased that Joe pitched our event to PA. I really hoped that it would appeal to a broad audience. Next time I see Joe I’ll have to see what he thought of it…
April 25th, 2006 at 8:31 pm
I’ve been enjoying this thread and don’t want to make it seem like I’m trying to “answer” the issues raised here in any kind of heavy, final way. Despite my role at Sunstone, I hope the non-factual type responses will be seen as simply additional thoughts.
#3. I’d guess they’d be available this Friday at the earliest. Our digitizing person won’t be in this week until Thursday (it’s finals week), and then we’d need at least a day to get the text part ready and everything loaded up. So soon.
#5. Attendance was slightly down (about 100 people this year compared to about 125 last time at Claremont). I don’t know what to chalk that up to except that I thought last time’s program there was overall below average in the number of home run sessions it had. Perhaps folks felt let down that time and decided not to give us another chance? And though I thought this year had a ton of really good sessions (no real dogs), it did have a huge focus on two topics (Mormonism in the academy and pop culture/film/television), and also had fewer sessions (three breakouts per time slot rather than the four we have most years).
I had great conversations at this symposium about the location, with folks coming down on both sides of this issue. An older person said she really, REALLY prefers hotel locations (and thought its not being at one was a definite reason for many deciding to stay away) because, as someone a bit older, she really values the ability to head upstairs to her room for a rest from time to time, and she also likes hotels for their on-site restaurants, as well. But she also very much understood that Sunstone has to pay $2000 at the very minimum to hold a symposium in a hotel, and we were to get underwriting of at least 75 percent of that, we’d lose too much money to justify all the time and energy we spend on organizing and working these events. Our board has directed us that we must have every expectation of at least breaking even in direct costs associated with any regional symposium or else we can’t hold it (we know that it’d be impossible to break even if one were to factor in staff wages for the time spent organizing and hosting these, so that’s where Sunstone relies on the general donations it receives).
The other person expressed how energized she is on a college campus, that Claremont was especially wonderful as a site for this year’s symposium given all that’s happening with Mormon studies there, that she’d be happy if we were at Claremont every year, etc.
Both my conversation partners and others acknowledged that it isn’t a great location given it’s not more central in the L.A. area but didn’t think the attendance suffered all that much from that concern.
The big issue that several folks brought up this year was child care and how nice it would have been to have daycare options through Sunstone. We’d tried that at our 2003 Bay Area symposium and NO ONE signed up for it—hence we hadn’t really thought about it again. But today I also received an email from a volunteer who says she’s willing to take it upon herself to think the matter through and try to make it happen next time we’re in So. Cal. Yeah!
#6 and 7 (about first-time discounts, repeat customers, etc.). Jana is right about first-timer discounts for SLC, but we haven’t thought of that for regionals. We should. We also offer Sunstone subscribers discounted attendance for SLC but don’t at regonals. Perhaps we should do that as well. Thanks for getting me thinking on this! The idea of a discount for someone bringing a first-timer friend is also a good one. I’ll chew on that–but like in the case of the other discounts, I think we’d have to make it only applicable to full-event registrations. Thanks!
About clicquishness. I hate it and try my best to introduce myself to folks, see who they are, and then try to connect them with someone I know who has similar interests, etc. Our board members also make every effort to reach out to those who seem lost or shy about mixing in. We’d love all Sunstone veterans to do the same!
9. The attendance for the Bay Area symposium was abysmal last year (about 65 people) and has been falling for several straight times. We’re very seriously considering the possibility of going next year to the model used in Seattle and Dallas—having the event in a large home with no breakout sessions. (With these types of symposiums, we try to schedule a variety of general-interest topics, eliminating the “specialist only” kinds of sessions that are fine when a symposium offers other options during a particular time slot).
10 and 11. Clifton Jolley is an amazing personality with an incredible mind and gift. And I thought he was fascinating Saturday night. BUT he was very long, and very animated, and given those things plus his positioning last on the panel, I agree that he sort of dominated that panel a bit too much. His talk in Dallas was at least 15 minutes shorter in Dallas and his LA Times jabs felt far fewer and less personal than they did with Bill Lobdell present. On the other hand, I felt his talk in Claremont was really much better content-wise—far more powerful in the way he talked about what it means to be “people of a book,” including all the poignancy of our so easily tossing aside our theology without much concern at all for those who were at one time centerpieces in it and how they might be affected. I also loved Clifton’s way of reminding us how very little importance such things should have in our spiritual lives (the stuff about his mother who was an incredible, loving person, yet still felt scandalized her whole life by her being a “love child” was a new element in the talk this time) I also think it was great to have an anti-realist position represented in this debate, and that was a huge factor in my wanting him on this panel. In fact, before I heard Clifton in Dallas, I considered asking Dennis Potter to be part of this So. Cal. panel as a way of opening up our eyes a bit to the issue of how easily we give ourselves over to science and its authority and how much cost to meaning and “life” that making those choices brings. But most of all, I wanted Clifton for the final poem he gave. Those of you who weren’t there should pony up the $4 to get the mp3 just to hear it!
Jana, I’d love to hear you say more about the racist language you heard. I heard a few things that struck me as potentially slightly offensive but wrote them off as being appropriate in a piece like his that was deliberately trying to be provocative. I’d love to know more specifics about what you’re referring to.
Sorry for the very long note! Thanks, all, for your great comments!
Dan Wotherspoon
April 26th, 2006 at 3:36 am
Dan, I agree with all of your points re Clifton and I agree with Jana that it was 15 minutes too long.
Personally, I wasn’t put off by “racist” comments; he was using all of the rhetoritician’s tools: irony, hyperbole, sarcasm, withering ridicule, satire, scorn & others. It was an amazing performance. But perhaps not with Bill Lobdell on the rostrum.
April 26th, 2006 at 7:52 am
Dan,
Is the DC symposium dead? Like Deborah, I cannot justify paying for a flight to the West.
April 26th, 2006 at 10:50 am
Jon,
We’d love to go back to D.C. but need someone there to volunteer to take the point and do a lot of the groundwork–especially finding a venue. We lost more than $2500 last time we went when we couldn’t find a free meeting place and then had only about fifty folks show up for the symposium. In fact, that was about the last straw for the board, causing them to lay down the law about expectations that we’d at least break even or else couldn’t hold one.
Do you know anyone in the D.C. area who would like to start a conversation about having Sunstone come to town again? I’d love to explore possibilities.
April 26th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
Unfortunately, a great deal of people definately see Sunstone as being a community that is elitist and cliquish. Not in the sense that they wont talk to you if they dont know you, but in the sense that you are not well tolerated if you are not yet “enlightened” enough. In most cases, enlightened can be directly translated as liberal.
While liberal views are welcomed and - for the lack of a better term - tolerated, even if extreme, this is not true at the other end of the spectrum. Individuals that may be more conservative are at times treated as an unthinking bumpkin. I am not saying that Sunstone as an organization does this, but the people that are very active in attending definately do.
In short, your own attendees themselves drive off some of those (us) who would be interested. Getting ridiculed for being more conservative while the equally off center liberal ideas are the norm gets a bit old.
I like diverse views on all subjects, but the constant undertone of “conservative = not free thinking” is tiresome. Even when I happen to have extreme liberal views on some subjects, hearing oposing ideas being set aside as unworthy of discussion really grates on me.
It is unfortunate, but the Sunstone Symposiums are being self limited by your own attendees.
April 26th, 2006 at 10:42 pm
Hey Dan,
I am in awe of all the blood, sweat and tears you pour into the the regional symposia (in addition to the hard work required of the annual meeting and the foundation/magazine). It seems almost too much to ask of one or even a few dedicated Sunstoners.
Have you thought about setting up little Sunstone franchise study groups along the home-symposium model? Maybe these meetings wouldn’t be as grand (or as demanding) as the regional meetings. Maybe there could be more of them, more intimate and accessible, perhaps with fewer big names. Maybe they’d meet more often. Kind of a Sunstone version of the small temples. Just a thought.
April 27th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
Thanks for the comments, Jason. And I appreciate your separating organizational efforts from attendee behavior as best you can in a subject like this. In responding, I’ll try to touch on the latter as much as I can but need to do a bit of organizational framing, too.
My predecessor, Elbert Peck, would often say that the easiest way to get a session accepted into a symposium is to argue a conservative position. And it’s true! As an organization whose mission is to host “open forums,” we try to pitch as large a tent as possible. And we especially go out of our way to invite all the conservatives and moderates we know to propose their own sessions or speak on panels, etc. Unfortunately, and for a variety of reasons—ranging from its being forbidden by their job (certain BYU departments, CES, etc.) to expressions similar to what you give here—most of them decline. For some, Sunstone discussions just don’t feel relevant enough to their lives and interests to make the effort to prepare a paper. And one well-known conservative told Elbert, “Sunstoners just aren’t MY people.”
And therein is the rub. Don’t we all tend to gravitate toward hanging out with those we feel most comfortable with—OUR people? Toward reading and listening to things we already agree with? So, in essence, and as I know you recognize, in describing cliquishness among some attendees, you’re simply describing human nature as much as anything else.
I think you’re right about the “conservative=not free-thinking” mantra being present among many at Sunstone, just as it is among political and liberal religious idealogues. And I know you’d recognize the presence of a “liberal=immoral/amoral/without values” sort of mantra among many conservative idealogues.
The question becomes how does one ever prove these formulas to be the gross distortions that they are? The only way I know how to do it is through modeling an attitude that is different from that perception. I love William James’s phrase about “wild facts”—data points that just don’t fit a previous conception. And I promise there are plenty of wild-fact Sunstoners who come to our symposiums—some who are conservatives themselves or, if essentially liberal, who still very much value hearing well-articulated positions that challenge their current conceptions. I’d love you and others who have come to conservative positions based upon a great deal of thought to become wild facts for more and more Sunstoners to be forced to wrestle with. Please propose a paper! Or write me privately about your specific interests, and I’ll work to find a panelist or respondent slot (or two, or six!) to put you in.
One area that I especially think Sunstoners really match up well with conservatives (at least regarding levels of receptivity) is in matters related to spiritual growth and development. Politics leads to extremism. Approaches to scripture and other authoritative texts is a bit less polarizing as a subject but still generates strong, strong feelings. But great sermons and tales of spiritual journeying and transformation and deepened insights—wow! That’s where I see great meeting points, spots where wonderful interactions between attendees from all ends of the religious spectrum can and do take place. That’s where hearts get involved. And I promise you that we work very hard to schedule as many sessions like that as we can.
We always include something in the introductory materials to our symposium programs along the lines of this (from our 2005 final program): “As you work your way through this program, look for opportunities to stretch your hearts and minds. Attend a wide variety of presentations. But remember, this is not just a conference—it’s a gathering! Hear favorite speakers for sure, but don’t forget to catch a film or attend a panel discussion about something you are not familiar with. As you go, you may hear things you disagree with, perspectives that might be difficult or challenging to accommodate. These are hallmarks of lively exchanges. Still, be sure to pay attention to hearts as well as ideas. Feel free to ask probing questions and laugh at cultural foibles. But, above all, celebrate faith that isn’t afraid to question, and treasure the clues you’ll find through hearing those who have come to joy even in this challenging and chaotic world.”
I don’t have any better ideas than this about how to change perceptions or communicate to our attendees that cliquishness doesn’t really mesh with the ideals of our organization. If you or anyone else has ideas about how to do this, I’d love to hear them!
Thanks, again, for your post!
Dan Wotherspoon
April 27th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
I wanted to respond to a couple of things here, but will only do the cliquish one first. How about a table at lunch, or an area, or something like that designated for people who’d like to meet new people? And, you’d be sure that a significant number of people had been asked ahead of time to be there, and actually talk to them? Same thing at the evening dinner– have a group reservation at a restaurant, and an open invitation for others to join. Obviously you’d have to have them respond to that one a bit beforehand, but it would help people who have come alone to feel more included. I usually go to dinner with friends, but we’d have been very happy to be a part of that kind of thing Saturday night.
As for John’s suggestion about the local study groups– I live north of San Diego, in Encinitas.I’d be up for hosting one, or attending one, but in the years I’ve attended Sunstone West, I’ve only met two other people from San Diego county there– what’s the subscriber list like here? (And one of those two is Dan’s sister. We were even in the same building at church, but different wards, until a couple of years ago.)
April 27th, 2006 at 7:10 pm
In addition to San Diego County, I’d be curious about the subscriber count in Los Angeles, Orange County, and Riverside County as well. What percent coverage is 100 attendees as it relates to the existing Sunstone subscriber base in these four counties? (I realize of course that not all attendees are necessarily Sunstone subscribers.) Besides mailers, what else is/was done to specifically alert and/or create excitement for the SoCal Sunstoner base regarding Sunstone West?
April 28th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
I’ll tell you one reason why symposiums are seen as bastions of liberalism, it’s because there is so little room (from my own experience) for liberal expression in official church settings. I very much appreciate Sunstone providing a few days each year for me to go to “Sunday school classes” of actual substance, where points of view can actually come into constructive dialogue.
I can certainly see why people would want to air their liberal thoughts a lot more during symposiums than they would if they found more acceptance in their own church meetings.
April 28th, 2006 at 7:50 pm
My opinion is that Sunstone is becoming too much like church. The speeches are becoming like church talks. Too much beating around the bush so we won’t offend those who are so easily offended.
We need someone who doesn’t beat around the bush. We need a “responsible radical”, there are a few around. Radicals get the blood flowing.
We also need presentations from ordinary people. I personally love the talks by pointly headed academics, But, I want to hear from someone who isn’t a Ph’d once in a while.
I’ve been going to the SLC Sunstone since 1986 but when I send a paper in to be considered for presentation I never get a response. Of course, this was back when Elbert was having his troubles.
Gordon Hill
April 29th, 2006 at 4:02 am
“My opinion is that Sunstone is becoming too much like church. The speeches are becoming like church talks. Too much beating around the bush so we won’t offend those who are so easily offended.”
Gordon, have I got the Sunstone tape for you: Sunstone West, DNA & BoM. Dan will have it uploaded in a jiff. Skip through first 3 presentations. Then settle in for Clifton Jolley. He’s your man. (He taunted the audience with, “We’re so NICE!!” or “We’re too NICE.”
Mike Quinn made a comment sympathizing with LA Reporter Bill Lobdell for the roast he received from Jolley. Jolley retorted, “Even those we excommunicate are TOO NICE.” Definitely not SS.
April 29th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
My friend was quite confused by Clifton Jolley, still thinking of him as the guy who used to write for the Deseret News. She didn’t realize that he had converted to Judaism. I don’t know if she was the only one in that situation, but maybe a tiny explanation for folks who don’t follow Sunstone regularly would have been helpful. (Maybe it was there in the bio on the program and I missed it?)
May 1st, 2006 at 1:50 pm
Oh the irony…looking for free buildings in which Latter-day Saints can convenve…all the while driving past hundreds of local LDS Chapels that will likely remain vacant on the days in question.
There’s something profound, I think, in this irony.
May 2nd, 2006 at 11:15 am
I have attended two symposia, long ago, and was a speaker at both. The first one was in 1987, in Berkeley, and the second was in Universal City, here in L.A. I’ve never been back. In the Universal City symposium I responded to a paper by an author who was clearly quite bitter toward the Church. I also felt a general sense of bitterness, cynicism, and elitism. I felt so out of place that I’ve never been interested in returning.
I don’t mean to be negative, simply honest.
May 2nd, 2006 at 10:31 pm
I seem to have bad luck–I don’t find out about a nearby symposium until it’s a week or two away. If I knew a month or two in advance, I could plan better. I look on the website and in the magazine occasionally to check. Is there an approximate schedule when these occur?
May 3rd, 2006 at 8:12 am
EmilyCC, Sunstone West is always in April, and alternates between Bay Area and LA. But Dan’s comments above sound as though there may be changes to the Bay Area setup.
The Utah symposium has moved around in time over the years, but lately seems to have been either the last week of July, first or second week of August. (And that’s much better for me than the later weeks of August– which was when the symposium was for many years.)
May 3rd, 2006 at 5:42 pm
Getting back to the question of how well publicized Sunstone West was this year.
Russ Frandsen sent the notice to his Miller Eccles mailing list of 500+. He has done this in the past I believe.
Joe Bentley of LDS Public Affairs in SoCal sent the notice to his mailing list. I don’t know how large that is but that was a new source of publicity from past years.
Paula, I’m tempted to say that there is no explanation of C. Jolley, short or long, that does justice to the man.
May 4th, 2006 at 5:15 am
Sorry to be so long in responding to several of the great posts here! We’re in the final week of a magazine cycle and are doing the 12-hour-day thing, etc. I just haven’t had the time to focus on much of anything else. In fact, I’m writing this at 4:45am because I’m in the no-man’s land of a sleepless night and figured I’d try to be productive. Hope whatever I say makes some sense!
Reply to #17. Thanks for the props, John! Symposiums are fun, but, as you and Jana got a taste of, they are a lot of work! We REALLY loved having you on board as co-organizers this year. You guys have amazing gifts!
A couple of thoughts regarding smaller-model symposiums:
Because Sunstone is a “brand name” of sorts—and one that folks have a wide variety of opinions about—I’m charged as executive director to make sure that (to whatever degree I can, given that one can never predict exactly what folks with microphones in their hands will say and do!) whatever happens under the Sunstone name falls within the parameters of the Sunstone mission statement: “. . . to sponsor open forums of Mormon thought and experience. Under the motto, ‘Faith Seeking Understanding,’ we examine and express the rich spiritual, intellectual, social, and artistic qualities of Mormon history and contemporary life. We encourage humanitarian service, honest inquiry, and responsible interchange of ideas that is respectful of all people and what they hold sacred.”
As such, if something were to have the name “Sunstone” attached to it, we in the office would pretty much have to have a decent level of oversight over it, even if it were small. And to make the trade-off in time and resources (and stress!), I’d put about a bottom limit of someone convincing us that forty to fifty attendees would be coming and would register to the tune of about $25 each. In other words, it’d need to have about a budget of $1000 that could cover at least one Sunstone staffer traveling to it, along with mailing and printing costs, plus travel and (occasional) honorariums for out-of-town speakers (though, some like Rob, generously pay all their own expenses and speak for free! Woo hoo!), etc. If that expectation can be reached, we’d love to be involved in an official way.
There is another model for small gatherings, however, and perhaps it’s more along the lines of what you’re thinking (and what Paula and Matt in posts #19 and #20 are perhaps also imagining). Sunstone is very happy to be a resource for someone developing small study groups. We’ve helped several groups form by alerting folks within a city or geographical area that someone (we provide the name and contact information) is trying to form a group and would love them to respond to them about their interest level, etc. Due to privacy issues with our database, we’d need to broker the initial contact but then are very happy to step out of the way as things move ahead from there. And when that group forms, they are not in any way an official “Sunstone” group, though we at Sunstone will be happy to continue to support it in reasonable ways—helping put them in touch with speakers, providing past articles or symposium sessions that may be designated as that month’s “reading/listening assignment” in service of a topic they’d like to discuss, etc. In the past couple of years, groups have formed to various degrees of permanency in Boise, Idaho, Logan, Utah, and Colorado Springs, Colorado.
So, if any of you would like to contact us about trying to make something happen in your area, please do. Follow these steps: (1) Write or call us and tell us what you have in mind; (2) We can discuss the region you hope to draw from and will query our database to see how many subscribers or other affiliated folks live there; (3) We can write to them about what you’re interested in doing (or better, email or snail mail a letter YOU write) with your contact information. From then on, it will be a matter of their getting in contact with you and you all making whatever happens, happen. Such a group would initially be a group of “Sunstoners” but could evolve in whatever way it evolves—and we’d be very pleased simply knowing we helped folks find each other.
Hope this makes sense. . . . Happy to clarify.
Cheers!
Dan
May 4th, 2006 at 5:24 am
#19. Good ideas about helping broker some new contacts, Paula. I think something could be done there, though we’d likely not be able to be involved in arranging things off-site (it’d have to be in the hotel restaurant or folks coming back with their McDonalds “to go” bags and shooting the bull in one of the session rooms), and we’d not be willing to assist in something on Saturday that competes with the Sunstone banquet.
We have a board meeting on 12 May. I’ll bring it up. My guess is we’ll get some board support in terms of ideas as well as “guests” to be there for sure at the meet-and-greet lunch. I’ll alert you to things here. And look for something in the preliminary program.
And please feel free to call or email me privately if you or anyone else have more concrete ideas about “how” something like this might look/work.
Thanks!
Dan
May 4th, 2006 at 5:28 am
#20. Matt. I’m writing from home, but my memory is that we sent out about 230 preliminary programs to So. Cal. subscribers and past symposium attendees, along with multiple copies to some of our So. Cal board members, organizing partners, and friends to pass along. And as Rob said in post #29, we had great cooperation from Miller-Eccles and others.
Any ideas for how we could (cost-effectively) identify and alert more potential attendees?
Thanks!
Dan
May 4th, 2006 at 8:26 am
#26. Lowell. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
As one might expect from any large gathering of people, there is no one particular reason that someone chooses to come to our symposiums, no one particular temperament. And certainly, no two people share the same experiences or are at exactly the same place in their journey vis a vis the Church.
Given that, some folks who attend our symposiums are “smarting” or even feeling bitter about a particular issue or event or mindset or whatever it is that has led their feeling a bit marginalized. We still welcome these folks to attend, for we think rubbing shoulders with others at our symposium would assist them in feeling more at peace, catching glimpse of other (perhaps wider) perspectives, etc. But know that though we welcome them to attend, we take very seriously our mission statement (that I quoted in my post #30) and do whatever we can to make sure that we only allow those on the program who have a constructive agenda or otherwise qualify as someone who respects belief and spirituality and things people in the audience would hold sacred. I may knowingly agree to host a presentation by a skeptic, but if I do, it’s someone who I know is open to hear others and who won’t speak in belittling tones.
To speak on the program (and, again, I can’t control what someone says when they actually have a microphone in their hands), I need to be convinced that this person has something interesting to say and is qualified to present on that topic, that it is relevant to Mormonism, and that this person and their presentation fits within the parameters of the mission statement. We reject out of hand anything from an anti-Mormon source, as well as anything smacking of a potential tirade.
With more than ninety sessions in a typical Salt Lake symposium, we do make mistakes—a session or presentation will end up being quite different than how it was pitched to me (or how I understood what that person or group proposed). I also feel uncomfortable when someone in a presentation or an audience comment says something snide or belittling, especially of a Church leader or a practice or mindset—and I don’t like it when audience members laugh along (usually uncomfortably, thank goodness) with that. I believe the vast majority of folks who attend today feel much the way I do on these matters, and there is a level of self-policing that also takes place. (Attendees, for the most part, aren’t shy!)
I can’t deny that your 1987 and other participation may have been exactly as you described them for those sessions, and beyond them a bit. Just know that today’s magazine and symposiums truly are guided by the principles stated in our mission, that we do everything we can to assure that sessions are constructive in nature.
Best,
Dan
May 4th, 2006 at 9:03 am
#27. Emily, we do our best to advertise when things are (magazine, website, mailing to subscribers in the area along with past attendees)—and they generally do have a rhythm to them.
As Paula (post #28) says, the summer symposium is usually the Wednesday thru Saturday of the second week of August. And we prefer that. We got thrown off course last year by a hotel snafu (switching database systems that caused our reservation to go away and not be noticed by the hotel’s staff-folk who work with us each year until it was too late and someone new had committed the space to another group). But we’re back with reservations for that second week of August for the next five years. This year, it’s 9-12 August.
BTW, that week is the ideal week for our group hotel-wise. Because so many Sunstone attendees live in Utah or have relatives here they can stay with, we’re not an overly attractive convention for a hotel to host because we don’t fill very many hotel sleeping rooms. They love the facilities we use and pay for, that our folks do eat at the hotel restaurant, etc.—but hotels make their money by booking sleeping rooms, and we don’t do well there. The second week in August coincides with the outdoor retailers convention held in SLC every year in August, which causes EVERY hotel room in town to fill up. So the Sheraton is excited to book us then because they get the best of both worlds: full convention facilities and decent in-hotel spending, plus all their rooms filled. Without this cross-over with the outdoor retailers, we’d likely have to do a hotel search fresh every year and wouldn’t be able to book much more than 60-90 days in advance, as hotels would be holding out for potentially more attractive gangs to host (sleeping room wise, that is).
As Paula says, Sunstone West is always in the spring and alternates between No. Cal (Bay Area) and So. Cal. (L.A. area). Dates vary due to location availability, but we generally prefer April.
Sunstone Northwest is always in the fall at Molly Bennion’s home (on a hill overlooking downtown Seattle). Dates are planned based on what works best, with a major concern being that it doesn’t land on a date when the University of Washington football team is playing at home. How’s that for priorities!
Those are the ones in the “regular” rotation right now. We’ve had a Dallas event in the spring two of the past three years. That one will likely become a more regular event as long as Steve Eccles stays there and stays interested in hosting one, but we’ll see how things go.
We very much enjoyed going to Arizona this past January, and it was very successful. We’d love to go back there, but if so, we’d like to do it while school is in session. I’ve begun conversations with the folks there, but we’ve agreed to really get planning when they return for Fall semester. So no announcement yet.
Washington D.C. was a regular event that was almost always be held in the spring. As I said in an earlier post, we’d love to go back, but we’ll need some local folks to be the energy there, and especially to arrange for a no-cost venue.
Dan—who is headed back to work on the magazine now. Sorry for my blog hogging this morning….
May 9th, 2006 at 10:22 pm
I attended a Utah symposium about five years ago. I really looked forward to it, but was disappointed at the degree to which it resembled crummy academic conventions. I enjoyed many of the sessions and bought books galore, but tired quickly of the amount of whining going on in many of the sessions.