Kindred Conferences

These are conferences or events which BIL wants to help promote. If you’d like your event or conference listed here, please check the guidelines.

Kindred Guidelines

We’d be happy to promote conferences and events that are in the same vein as BIL. These show up as blog postings on the front page, and are listed in a sub-section of the Conferences page.

We’ve picked a set of standards for which conferences to promote through this channel. This might seem odd, given that we’re an ‘open’ conference, and we’re open to suggestions. The reason behind the curation is to maintain focus. Bear in mind we encourage participants to promote their causes through other forums.

Our rough decision metric

  1. The conferences should be hosted by academic or non-profit institutions.
    BIL doesn’t mind capitalism, but this isn’t the appropriate venue for promoting events which are profit oriented.
  2. The conferences should address large-scale problems or causes.
    BIL is trying to make the world a better place, and we want to promote ideas which will have a big impact.
  3. The conferences should generally be apolitical, i.e. not dominated by one political party over another.
    BIL wants all parties to engage in discourse, and strongly political party conferences are too conceptually homogeneous for our tastes.
  4. Promotion does not mean BIL agrees with any particular viewpoint, just that we feel the topic warrants debate.
    BIL has no position. BIL promotes discussion and action, but does not advocate any particular course of action.
  5. Being on the ‘promote’ list requires a majority vote between Tyler Emerson, Bill Erickson, and Todd Huffman.

BIL participants are welcome to promote any event they want through their own channels, but this particular channel is curated. The decisions are made on the above rules, and on whether the event
fits an undescribable ‘certain something’ BIL is going for. A decision of yes or no also depends on the context — we might not choose something because we’ve seen a lot of similar things lately and feel the topic is adequately covered.