A Free Atheist Conference in Madison, Wisconsin

If I’ve learned one thing about conferences over the past few years, it’s that the Skepticon model works. It’s a hell of a lot of work for the student groups (!!!) to organize, but if they can make it free and open it up to the general public, people will come in droves.

This is all dependent on people donating money for the cause — to cover things like the travel/lodging costs for speakers (who tend to come for free) and the space (unless the university provides it at no cost to the student group).

We’ve seen this work for Reasonfest in Kansas, too.

Now, Freethought Festival 2012 is coming to Madison, Wisconsin April 27^th-29^th:

They have an awesome array of speakers. I’m excited to be one of them and I’ll be presenting a new talk on How We Can Help Young Atheists.

Like I said, it’s a free conference — but you do have to register.

Please consider chipping in a few bucks using the PayPal icon on the left side of this page. Those contributions are what allow these free conferences to continue.

(via AHA at UW-Madison)

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John Figdor

Sounds good, but I’m a little disappointed there are only 4 female speakers out of 20 (I don’t want to blame the event coordinators, since maybe none of the other major female speakers were available or affordable). After all, no event is perfect, and this will be a good improvement to make for next year and future Atheist conferences in Madison. Hope you folks have a good time!
John Figdor

There’s still time, so think about maybe inviting Jen McCreight, Greta Christina, Jamila Bey, Christina Rad, Rebecca Goldstein, Rebecca Watson, Ashley Paramore, Lyz Lydell, Katie Hartman, Mary Roach, or Mary Johnson, just to throw some names out there off the top of my head.
Elyisha

kind of wish we could get a recess from 1-3. Now I have to choose between seeing awesome speakers and lending my voice to the march for womans rights…. They both land on that saturday from 1-3 🙁 It kind of sucks being an atheist woman that day.