I am pleased to announce that registration will open at noon on Monday May 11th 2009. This is a slight departure from the anticipated end-of-April estimate, but the wait is almost over. The cost of the conference has been confirmed as £175, including meals and a delegate bag of ‘goodies’, with an optional meet-and-greet evening meal and comedy event on the Saturday night – traditional British bangers and mash with some of your favourite speakers.
I still have a couple of exciting announcements to make, including new speakers and the line-up of the comedy night, which promises to be as Amazing as The Amazing Meeting itself!
Tickets are first-come-first served, and a total of 500 will be available for sale on the website. The site may slow or even crash as the first day rush happens, but don’t worry, check back often and we’ll try and keep it running smoothly. A lot of people have asked me if I expect it to sell out immediately, and I really can’t answer that. Whilst I hope we sell out eventually, I want everyone to be able to get a ticket. We won’t know til registration opens whether demand will outstrip supply, but I do recommend booking early just in case.
Watch this space for more announcements soon!
Tracy
12 Comments
Will there be a discount for university students? I’d really like to go but £175 seems a little pricey.
Will you be able to pay via PayPal? If not, which cards will be accepted?
Will the tickets for the comedy night be available at the same time as registration?
Thanks
The League of Reason will be there!
Roll on October 3rd!
Hi Jack – a small discount for students and JREF members, the price is reduced to £165. You’ll need to bring proof of status with you when you arrive, unless you look 13
Redclaire – all major credit and debit cards will be accepted. The payment system is Google Checkout which is basically the same as Paypal – you put in your card details and address, etc, and the transaction goes through Google’s secure server, easy peasy.
Is there any chance of scholarships for students like there were for TAM7? Even at £165, I just can’t afford to go… I’m sure there are quite a few others out there in my position, who would love to attend but just don’t have enough money to do so.
Scholarships are organised by volunteers – if you want to start a scholarship fundraising scheme I’d be more than happy to work with you on that. Usually the funds come from auctions, although there are other ways of raising money such as corporate/university sponsorship.
There will be two student registrations available free of charge, details to be announced soon but it’s likely that they’ll be in the form of an essay competition or something similar.
Hope that helps,
Tracy
I will pay the 175 pounds with the understanding that it will be refunded to me as an appearance fee.
Scrut, it’ll cost at least that much to buy me a blunderbuss to keep you out.
I will be staying with friends (south of London) around that time, would you suggest I stay in a hotel closer to the conference for Saturday, or would it still be okay to head back to their place after the days events.
Last year James Randi came to speak in London. A venue with a capacity of 500 was booked. It sold out in hours and people were turned away at the door. I coudln’t get a ticket.
I was astounded that the JREF lacked the foresight to realise that 500 seats in a city of 13 million would be insufficient. I was overjoyed to see TAM coming to London this year however, and then once again astounded to see that 500 tickets would be made available. Let me help you out on the issue of whether tickets will sell out immediately – yes they will, and once again thousands of people will be disappointed.
Not only that, the ridiculous ticket price will also mean that ordinary mortals without that kind of money to spend won’t even get the chance of a ticket, which just reinforces my view that one is not welcome at the JREF unless they are a world famous academic or a tv personality.
It seems obvious, but I’ve been caught out by this one before!
Is that for a room as well, or do we need to arrange a hotel room ourselves? Does the venue have parking? (probably not a question that would occur to non-uk residents!)
Patrick – I can’t make any recommendations but the Saturday night optional event, if you’re coming, is likely to go on pretty late and TAMs always end up in the pub, so it depends how late you want to stay out!
Jim – registration doesn’t include accommodation, there are discounts on the Resources page under Hotels, but your best bet is to try online first at somewhere like hotels.com, or start a thread on FB or JREF for room sharing, maybe?
Alexander, thanks for your comments. I must point out that the Randi event last year at Conway Hall was just a few pounds, and we can’t compare it to TAM because they’re two entirely different events. Whether a £10 event sells out has little bearing on whether a £175 conference will sell out, although I agree that Randi is a huge attraction.
This is the first TAM in the UK, and as such we have to be cautious. It’s a fundraiser, so to over-anticipate demand and book a venue accordingly (although there are almost none in central London that are suitable for a larger crowd anyway) would be a bigger mistake than risking selling out. If JREF were to lose money, that would be pretty bad! So yes, it’s limited availability, although bear in mind TAMs in the USA have only grown to 900 people in the past two years, before that I believe it was around the 400-600 mark so well in line with the first UK event.
If it’s a resounding success, that gives us enough information to base next year’s on, assuming there’s going to be another one. If it needs to be twice the size we’ll find the right venue, although we may have to look outside of London for that.
Hope that helps. If you need any more info please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Tracy