The U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives has opened its 2012 conference planning process to proposals. Proposals will be accepted until December 15. The planning committee will begin reviewing proposals as soon as they are submitted, and will notify proposers on a rolling basis, with final selections to be made by January 15, 2012.
Guidelines and tips to getting your workshop accepted:
This conference year is the International Year of the Cooperative. It is our time to celebrate what we represent and also to share our tools and experience with people from all different regions. Keep this in mind as you formulate your workshop ideas. We are looking for solutions to specific challenges as well as ways that worker cooperatives link up to larger solutions.
- Be specific! Often we can learn most concretely and make the bigger connections by focusing in very closely on a particular region or industry or cooperative or structure or idea. Consider how to keep it interesting by making it specific, and then how to relate it back out to our overall theme: solutions.
- Be creative! The world may not need another general “unions and coops” discussion, or “management issues in coops” workshop, but these issues are important, so consider approaching them from an unexpected angle or new vantage point.
- Be something we haven’t seen before! There’s always room for the basics and foundational topics, and if you’re really good at those, by all means propose a workshop on a well-traveled coop topic. But what will really get you noticed is something we haven’t seen yet: either a new topic, or new approach to an old topic, or a new presentation method/presenters
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