|
Comments Concerning the Osaka Conference and
Tips for Future Conferences
Below, you will find two texts submitted by
Frank Berto: his final report on the Osaka
conference and his suggestions for organizers of
future conferences. We encourage everybody
interested in the conferences to read these
reports. If you have any comments, whether
positive, negative or otherwise, please send
them in to Rob van der Plas (using the "contact
us" button on the left), so they can be posted
on this website as well in order to get a
discussion going and to get the maximum benefit
of everybody’s participation for future
conferences. If you want to address your
comments directly to the author, click here:
fberto@ix.netcom.com
1. Final Report for the11th International
Cycle History Conference.
Held in Sakai-Osaka, Japan from August 24th
through August 26th, 2000
The 11th International Cycle History Conference
was a huge success. Most of the credit should go
to Shimano. They set a standard that will be
hard to equal. I have written thank-you letters
to President Yoshizo Shimano and to Ken Fujimura
and Hiroshi Nakamura, the Shimano executives
that supervised the organization of the ICHC in
Japan.
The conference ran from Wednesday, August 24
through Friday August 26. There was a bike ride
on Saturday morning, August 27.
Twenty-six attendees and 11 spouses came from
outside Japan. Twenty-five attendees came from
Japan. Additionally about half a dozen Shimano
employees attended most of the sessions.
On Wednesday morning, we went on a tour of the
Shimano factory and attended a video
presentation and a talk on Shimano's research
and development program. We had a formal
Japanese lunch at the Shimano Memorial House, a
restored turn-of-the-century Japanese home.
After lunch, Gert-Jan Moed gave a slide show on
the history of the Batavus Museum, which forms
the core of the Shimano Bicycle Museum. We spent
the afternoon enjoying the museum, including the
basement bicycle storehouse. Shimano hosted a
Welcoming Banquet at the hotel that evening.
A total of 26 papers were given on Thursday and
Friday. Eighteen speakers came from outside of
Japan and eight speakers came from Japan. Two of
the Japanese speakers gave their papers in
Japanese, which was translated into English.
This allowed 30 minutes for each paper and 5
minutes for discussion. The Japanese speakers
were given more time. The Friday afternoon
session was split into parallel strands of four
papers each.
Nicholas Oddy and Hans Lessing ran the Plenary
Meeting at the end of the Friday afternoon
session. Hans had not been able to contact
Stefano Milani (who had offered to organize the
2001 conference in Milan, so we could not
confirm the details for the 12th ICHC. The group
voted that we should not hold the 12th ICHC in
conjunction with the Milan Bicycle and
Motorcycle Show.
On Friday evening, Shimano hosted the Closing
Banquet at the hotel. President Yoshizo Shimano
attended with his wife and gave a short speech.
Nick Oddy, representing the ICHC, thanked him
for the outstanding hospitality. The Karaoke
session that followed showed the extent of our
singing ability.
I received a very nice fax from Hein Verbruggen,
the President of UCI (Union Cycliste
Internationale). I wrote back and thanked him.
The ICHC is now being recognized as the
international body that it is.
There are no rules and few guidelines for
organizing a History Conference. This is both an
advantage and a problem for the organizer. It
can be daunting to a newcomer because he has no
real idea of what is expected. To make it a bit
easier for future presenters, I include a short
list of recommendation for future conferences.
2. Suggestions for Organizers of
International Cycle History Conferences
I've written this to share my experiences as
organizer of the 11th ICHC in Osaka, Japan from
August 23 to 25, 2000. I have been involved in
the ICHCs since the 7th conference, which was
held in Buffalo in 1996.
Background. The ICHC began in 1990 when a
conference was held in Glasgow, Scotland to
celebrate the 150th Anniversary of Kirkpatrick
Macmillan's velocipede. Five papers were
presented. At the end of the conference, the
organizers got together and said words to the
effect, "Well that was great fun, let's do it
again next year."
A volunteer agreed to organize the 2nd
conference, which was held in Saint-Etienne,
France, in 1991. This established the pattern
for the subsequent conferences.
The ICHC is an informal organization. It has no
officers, no staff, no bank account, no budget,
no charter, and no rules. It survives because
someone always steps forward and volunteers to
organize the next conference. The volunteer has
a free hand in arranging his conference.
Costs. It costs about $800.00 for the
mailings and the telephone and fax costs. The
organizer pays his own expenses to attend the
conference. If you charge each attendee and each
spouse a $50.00 Attendance Fee, plus $50.00 for
one copy of the Proceedings, you should break
even. This assumes that you don't have to pay
for the meeting rooms, coffee breaks, luncheons,
or bus transportation. You should be able to
cover the Final Banquet from the $50.00
Attendance Fee. Because Shimano was so generous
picking up expenses, I bought a T-shirt for each
attendee with the money that was left over. You
won't know how you will end up financially until
you get the response from the first mailing.
Attendance. You are probably safe to
assume 25 attendees plus 8 spouses from the
"regulars." Add to this the “locals” from the
conference area.
Proceedings. The Proceedings are the key
accomplishment of the ICHC. The ten sets of
Proceedings are the best-written history of the
bicycle that is available today. Rob Van der
Plas, of Van der Plas Publications, arranges
each year to publish the Proceedings. The fee
for each conference attendee should include
$50.00 to cover the cost of one copy of the
Proceedings. You don't need to charge the
spouses for the Proceedings. This up-front
charge is essential to keep Rob reasonably
whole. The Proceedings are a labor of love
because the sales are low.
Mailing List. I will give you a mailing
list with about 180 names on a diskette written
in Word 7.0 for Windows 98. It includes about 50
e-mail addresses. You can use a mailing list
program to convert this to mailing labels. Send
out the entire list the first mailing. Prune the
mailing list drastically for the second and
subsequent mailings. Add the name of every
bicycle historian and every bicycle magazine
editor that you know and ask them to publicize
the ICHC.
Number of Papers. I advise you to plan on
20 papers plus or minus two. I scheduled 26
papers. In my opinion, this was too many for a
two-day conference. The scheduling had to be
ruthless and it took the fun out of the
sessions. With 20 papers, you can allow 30
minutes for presentation and 10 to 15 minutes
for questions and answers.
Advice to Speakers. Speakers should
rehearse their talks to be sure that it fits
into 30 minutes. The talk should be a digest of
the published paper that covers the highlights
and encourages discussion. Remember that English
is a second language for many in the audience.
Provide lots of illustrations, graphs, and
headings to help the audience. If English is
your second language and the paper is written in
English, it is better off to ask an
English-speaking friend to read your prepared
talk.
Organizer's Responsibility
The organizer is responsible for the
following:
· Publicity and call for papers. Publicity in
the local cycling press will encourage local
attendees
· Arrange for a conference room, food for the
coffee breaks and the luncheons, and for a
closing banquet.
· Arrange the program.
· Locate inexpensive hotel accommodations. The
attendees and the speakers normally pay their
own expenses for travel, hotels, and morning and
evening meals.
· It is certainly desirable to beat the drums
for papers. If you receive more than 20 papers,
set up a Review Committee to pick the best 20
papers from the submitted abstracts.
· If you can arrange a subsidy from a sponsor,
that's fine but it's not essential. In most of
the previous conferences, the sponsor provided
the conference room and the refreshments. At the
11th ICHC, Shimano subsidized the hotel expenses
for the 26 people who presented papers. This
worked out splendidly but there aren't many
sponsors as generous as Shimano.
· It is desirable to arrange a factory tour or
some other form of recreation. Previous
conferences have included museum tours sight
seeing tours and bicycle rides.
I repeat that all of the above items are just
suggestions. Each conference reflects the ideas
of the organizer.
And Finally: Future conference organizers
should have attended at least one prior
conference before embarking on the task of
organizing one themselves. This point was driven
home once more by the glaring mistakes made in
organizing the 2005 Davis conference: despite
both Frank Berto and Rob van der Plas having
presented the organizer with these guidelines
and specific instructions, he failed to collect
the fee for the proceedings, so there's no money
to publish the proceedings for that conference. |
